"Romansy o grafe Villamed ʹiane" by Iurii Verkhovskii: Plot, Sources, and Poetic Form

This article identifies the source of Iurii Verkhovskii’s “Romansy o grafe Villamedʹiane” (“Romances of Count Villamediana,” 1906) and argues that, in his stylization of the genre and form of the Spanish romance, the Russian poet used biographical information about the poet Juan de Tassis y Peralta, Count of Villamediana (1582–1622) obtained from the 'History of Spanish Literature' by the American Hispanist George Ticknor. A clarification of the plot and intrigue of “Romansy...” is accompanied by an analysis of their poetic form. I analyze how Verkhovskii experimented with rhyme and show that he was the first in Russian poetry to imitate the Spanish assonance.