Luis Díaz Viana’s introduction provides a substantial overview of literatura de cordel and the history of attitudes toward and studies of the genre. He recalls Julio Caro Baroja’s characterization of it as a “infierno literario” and discusses the juglar as a kind of “amphibion” navigating between different registers of culture (I: 34). Díaz Viana goes on to resume and further develop themes at once related to chapbooks and broadsides, and, in a broader application, central to his thinking over the years, particularly challenging the concepts of the “traditional” and the “popular”, and the
very existence of “traditional culture” (I:31ff). He also, in vol. II, refers to the relatively new concept of the glocal, applying it to the goigs (gozos; see Josep Martí’s discussion, I: 191-226) and to cordel literature more generally (II,232). His thoughtful questions and reflections stimulate readers to pose our own about the very idea of “value” and “importance” and who is entitled to make judgments about them
