Customer Reviews

Poema del Mio Cid (Clasicos Castalia) (Clasicos Castalia / Castalia Classics) (Spanish Edition)

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Similar to the English _Beowulf_ because of its original date of publication and theme, _El Poema de Mio Cid_ is a tremendous epic poem about the legendary life of one of Spain's most prominent warriors. This edition is not a translation of the work, which is lovely, but the format of the text leaves something to be desired. I have read other editions where vocabulary and historical remarks are published in footnotes. This edition has both foot- and endnotes, making the reader flip through a number of pages before coming across the relevant information. Most of the endnotes are quotes from another editor and the vocabulary footnotes are not necessarily helpful. While I enjoyed the book, I was not thrilled with the literary assistance the foot- and endnotes attempted to give.

This is the Colin Smith edition of the Poema as published by Oxford UP in hardback format (1972) with the notes and Introduction translated into Spanish and published by Catedra in paperback.

The edition is based on the unique manuscript of the Poema that is housed in Spain's national library in Madrid.

"Best" at this time for editorial expertise, thoroughness, notes, glosses, and general accessibility.

For a crib on the Poema for English-dominant students, I suggest the W.S. Merwin English translation. The side-by-side format will help the reader to keep his/her place in the Colin Smith edition of the poem.

Who was Colin Smith?

Among much else, Colin Smith (d. 1997) was the author of the (also very important and useful) HarperCollins Unabridged Spanish-English Dictionary, the only one of its kind and the most useful such dictionary around in hardback. Smith's HarperCollins Unabridged Spanish-English Dictionary was first published in the early 1990s, to the best of my recollection and has been through a good number of editions.

Beware of buying the original yellow-cover dark-blue hardback though as secondary market sellers seem to confuse abridged and UNabridged, so do ask.
The older edition on the secondary market--
http://www.amazon.com/Harpercollins-Unabridged-Spanish-Dictionary-Colin/dp/0062702076

See the "updated" edition also: http://www.amazon.com/HarperCollins-Spanish-Unabridged-Dictionary-Harpercollins/dp/0060956917

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I am a Spanish speaker and have read the Poema del Mio Cid many times before, however I wanted to have a copy of my own. The translation is probably the worse I've ever read. The beautiful Old Spanish poem is turned into modern Spanish prose eliminating the poetical feeling to the work.
Whole sections are paraphrased affecting the real meaning of those parts. Besides that, there are many misspellings and other grammar errors.
The formatting is another thing that is terribly inconsistent and confusing, changing sometimes within the same page, which sometimes makes it hard to know if what you are reading are comments by the author or by the characters.
The historical analysis is not bad, but it is also not the best.

My advice: get another copy of the Poem, this edition does not make any justice to one most important Spanish works of literature.