Cantiga de amigo

Cantiga de amigo (Portuguese: [kɐ̃ˈtiɣɐ ð(j) ɐˈmiɣu], Galician: [kanˈtiɣɐ ðɪ aˈmiɣʊ]) or cantiga d'amigo (Galician-Portuguese spelling), literally "friend song", is a genre of medieval lyric poetry, more specifically the Galician-Portuguese lyric, apparently rooted in a female-voiced song tradition native to the northwest quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula.

Far more often sexuality is expressed by code words, like veer (‘see’), falar (‘talk’), and fazer ben (‘do a favour’).”[4] What mainly distinguishes the cantiga de amigo is its focus on a world of female-voiced communication.

The seven songs of Martin Codax are also contained, along with music (for all but one text), in the Pergaminho Vindel, probably a mid-13th-century manuscript and unique in all Romance philology.

[6] Although the rhetoric is simpler than of the two other genres, it is more complex than it was often allowed, slowly articulating a present action (or emotion) by repetition with variation, and usually holding important information until the end.

[7] The cantiga de amigo have been said to have characteristics in common with the Mozarabic kharajat, but these may be merely coincidences of female speaker and erotic themes.