The Dominican decima of popular tradition: An anthology, a classification of types and a study of its distinguishing features (Spanish text)

My thesis constitutes a study of traditional Dominican poetic forms. I begin with an introduction to the traditional Spanish romances (ballads) and to the espinela, a verse form which is a later development. I provide examples of these verse forms from their medieval beginnings to the present, and then I compare them with traditional Dominican decimas .; Decimas in the Dominican Republic are part of Dominican tradition and, to compare them with traditional Spanish verse forms, I traveled to the Dominican countryside to interview modern practitioners of the Dominican oral tradition. In these interviews, I asked them how they were able to learn these decimas, on what occasions and for what purposes they performed them, whether there had been noticeable changes from past practices to the present time, and whether they believed that these oral traditions were as strong now as in the past, or in danger of disappearing.; Gathering hundreds of decimas and other popular verse forms from different individual poets or groups in different regions of the country, I classified the poetry according to type and poetic structure. My dissertation consists of (1) a theoretical-historical background; (2) an anthology of Dominican popular verse of oral tradition.; In Chapter one I discuss theories regarding oral tradition and folklore, comparing the romance and the decima.; In Chapter two I review the genesis and evolution of the romance and the espinela, providing examples of both poetic forms to substantiate my observations.; In Chapter three I review the scholarship in this area and provide a critical analysis and clasification of the various oral poetic forms, rhyms and meter as well as the stylistic devices of oral Dominican poetry from the 16th to the 20th century.; Chapter four treats the question of the disappearance of folk/oral tradition in the modern world. I review scholarship on this question and add my own observations based on my study of Dominican oral tradition.; There are two appendices: an anthology of Dominican poetry exemplifying the oral tradition, which I recorded and transcribed; and interviews in the field with poets and practitioners of this vanishing art.