Architectures of Power in the Poema de mio Cid Julio F. Hernando Indiana University, South Bend This paper explores the use of architecture as a literary device that represents modalities and degrees of social integration in the Poema de mio Cid (1207). The evidence observed shows that these signs are used in different ways in the first and in the second half of the poem, which can be interpreted as traces of the development of the discourses during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In this article I will consider the use of architectonic elements in the Poema de mio Cid (1207) to express social localization. I will argue that the mention of buildings and their parts, a topos frequently used in epic, is highly functional in the Poema, and that the way it is employed changes as the text moves forward. In the first half of the poem, architectural references indicate the progress of the hero up the social ladder. His localization relative to architecture associates social privilege with merit and, by doing so, privileges aristocracy. Contrarily to this, in the second half of the Poema the imaginary of buildings expresses the limitations of an aristocratic organization of the polity, and serves to promote the centralization of power in monarchy. I will propose that these differences in treatment reveal the presence of diverse political discourses in the poem, and that they also suggest the existence of multiple instances of composition. As it is well known, the Poema de mio Cid describes the deeds of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, a late eleventh-century Castilian warrior. The poem starts describing Rodrigo’s departure to exile and narrates the military victories that enable him to establish a principality in the city of Valencia, on the east coast of the Iberian Peninsula. His victories also give him the financial means to send a shower of gifts to his king, Alfonso of Castile. These gifts will gain him the pardon of Alfonso, who additionally arranges the marriage of Rodrigo’s daughters to the brothers Diego and Fernando de Carrión, the scions of one of the great aristocratic families of his kingdom. Through the marriage of his daughters, Rodrigo is brought into the highest level of nobility. However, the poem narrates how those two brothers betray el Cid by beating and abandoning their wives, and how el Cid exacts revenge on them. Within this narrative there are many mentions of buildings and of building parts which, as Alan Deyermond and David Hook have observed, form a pattern of contrasts that confers “structural and stylistic coherence” to the poem (“Doors and Cloaks,” p. 375). The emphasis and repetition of these references suggest that, beyond their denotative and structural function, they convey additional meanings. The revision of the text reveals that nearly every occurrence of these elements happens in a 25.1-2