Title: Spanish National Hero Cid and the Heroic Writing in Herder’s Der Cid

Abstract: Spain’s national hero, Cid, is one of the most renowned figures in Spanish history, and the heroic epic El Cantar de Mío Cid, based on his historical deeds, is regarded as one of the three great heroic epics of medieval Europe. Johann Gottfried Herder, a key figure of the German Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, adapted the story of Cid and reworked it into the romance Der Cid. Drawing on his long-standing engagement with folk-song traditions, Herder rewrote the medieval Spanish hero through the genre of romance, highlighting Cid’s shifting attitudes toward different monarchs while emphasizing his unwavering commitment to defending national interests, thus reflecting the eighteenth-century bourgeois imagination of national heroes under enlightened despotism and embodying the Zeitgeist of the period.

Keywords: Der Cid, Herder, hero, nation, enlightened despotism

Author: Wenwei Pang, Professor, School of Foreign Studies, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2025.04.004