El romancillo de El bonetero, Juan de Mena y la tradición oral

Abstract

The fable of a ridiculous horse -lame, armless, stumbling and fraudulently sold to a person whose social caste is satirically described- makes the subject of sorne Coplas that were composed by Juan de Mena in the XVth century, and of an hexasyllabic «romancillo» that was documented in oral tradition from XVIIth century onwards until our time. Their formulistic, subject and social purpose coincidences suggest, although without any definite proof, their poetic interrelationship. An apocryphal XVIIth century collection of letters that unintentionally mixes up both types of texts -the literary and the oral one- also reinforces their possible poetic links.