De amor y primavera: el debate entre don Denis y Airas Nunez

Abstract Critics have interpreted Don Denis’ cantiga Proençaes soen mui bem trobar as a diatribe directed against Occitan troubadours who associated in their poems springtime exordium and song for love. Although some have considered the particular piece of the Portuguese king an aesthetic recreation of the cansós that rejected the début printanier cliché, in this contribution a different reading is proposed. Given that in the entire corpus of the cantigas de amor there is only one text by the Galician clergyman Airas Nunez (Que muito m’eu pago d’este verão) that unites spring, euphoric love, and lyrical activity, this article argues that Don Denis’ poem emerged as a polemic and ironic response to the eccentric verses of his colleague. From the proposed perspective, the king’s cantiga is contextually situated and understood as part of a series of texts that integrate the king and the clergyman’s metaliterary debate on the conception of love.