SOURCE: Pattison, D. G. “How Many Cantares Are There in the Poema de mio Cid?” The Modern Language Review 88, no. 2 (April 1993): 337-42.

In the following essay, Pattison questions the common practice of dividing the Cantar de mio Cid into three cantares, maintaining that this somewhat arbitrary division diminishes the poem's complexity.

It is generally accepted that the Poema de mio Cid is divided into three cantares.¹ This division depends on lines 1085 (‘Aquis conpieça la gesta de myo Çid el de Biuar’) and 2276 (‘Las coplas deste cantar aquis van acabando’) at the beginning and end respectively of the second cantar. However, like so much in our reading of the text, it depends in good measure on an editorial tradition deriving authority from the work of Ramón Menéndez Pidal. Earlier editors such as Sánchez, Hinard, Restori, and Huntington, among others, made no division at line 1085, although...