The enigma of the character and the plot of the Infantina's romance: an approach to the study of Sephardic and Hispanic romance

Abstract

 This text on the plot and the personage of the Infantina Pan-Hispanic ballad is based on extensive archive study in some of the most famous folklore study centres (Archive Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Madrid, Kingdom of Spain and Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb, Republic of Croatia). It tries to offer a new interpretation of the origin of the ballad in the Medieval novel Leyenda del Caballero del Cisne and it offers an extensive study of all known to us variants of the ballad. The interpretation of the plot is based on the legend studies on mythological beings. Reader-response criticism departs from the hermeneutic and semiotic supposition of the openess of meanings of the plot and characters. Individual character of the folklore narrator and character is reflected in the scientific subject of philologist and folklore scholar, in opposition to the collective folklore author.