Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Golden Age

Daniel Eisenberg

It can be said without fear of exaggeration that interest in and study of the romances of chivalry¹ has been an incidental by product of the study of the Quijote. Diego Clemencín has been until recently the person who knew best the romances of chivalry (see infra); his knowledge is found in the notes of his edition of the Quijote, and his Biblioteca de libros de caballerías was conceived of as a supplement to his edition. Collectors of romances of chivalry, such as the Marqués de Salamanca², bought them because they were books which Don Quijote had owned, and Juan Sedó chose as the topic for his inaugural speech in the Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona a Contribución a la historia del coleccionismo cervantino y caballeresco (Barcelona, 1948), as the two topics were so closely related that it was logical to discuss them at the same time. When libraries place the romances of chivalry on display, they do so in expositions devoted principally to Cervantes³. The romances which have received far and away the greatest amount of study, Amadís de Gaula, Tirant lo Blanch, and Palmerín de Inglaterra, are the ones which are praised in the escrutinio de la librería⁴. The authors who are seldom studied, and the most glaring abuse in this area is the treatment (or lack of it) of Feliciano de Silva, are neglected because of the censure of their works which we find in the Quijote.

This phenomenon has, of course, an obvious explanation. The Quijote is a work which all scholars of Spanish literature have read, and which much of the general public is familiar with in its broad outlines. The Quijote, besides its position as the most acceptable source of comment on the romances of chivalry, is the contemporary work in which the romances are discussed at greatest length. A considerable number of them are either named in the Quijote, or explicitly referred to; in many cases they are summarized with pithy comments, such as the priest's observation that Belianís «[tiene] necesidad de un poco de ruibarbo para purgar la demasiada cólera suya». The books are also commented on as a body. They are «aborrecidos de tantos y alabados de muchos más»; they constitute a «máquina mal fundada» (I, Prologue). They are «disparatados», and «atienden solamente a deleitar, y no a enseñar» (I, 47); none of them has «un cuerpo de fábula entero» (I, 47); nevertheless, the innkeeper «querría estar oyéndolos noches y días» (I, 32). In effect, since the romances of chivalry are a primary theme of the Quijote, they are commented on repeatedly, by many different characters and from many contrasting points of view.

Having said this, it must be pointed out that despite its popularity⁵, the Quijote is a paradoxical work, one of the most controversial ones in Spanish literature. How few things all cervantistas agree on! And many of the unanswered questions of the Quijote relate directly to the romances of chivalry. Did Cervantes admire the romances of chivalry because they «ofrecían [sujeto] para que un buen entendimiento pudiera mostrarse en ellos?» When the Toledo canon said that he had written a hundred pages of a romance of chivalry, never to be finished, was he speaking for Cervantes⁶? Was Cervantes' intent to end the popularity of the romances of chivalry, as is said many times in the work, a declaration which Avellaneda took as literal? Or was this only a pose or pretext, since the books were already dead? If he disliked the romances, how did he know them so well? In short, did he admire the romances, or find them ridiculous? Or was his true attitude some unknown compromise between these two positions?

What I mean to suggest, then, is that to take the comments in the Quijote as the basis for our knowledge of the romances of chivalry is to build our critical house on a foundation of sand. Too little is known with certainty about the relationship of the Quijote to the romances of chivalry for the often confusing or ambiguous information Cervantes offers there to be taken as reliable critical material. The romances of chivalry are, in fact, much less enigmatic works than the Quijote; we can read them, analyze them, and criticize them without danger of falling into the traps that await the scholar who ventures unprepared into the Manchegan countryside. What can, in fact, be done is to utilize the romances of chivalry as a tool to aid us in understanding the Quijote, once we have studied them and formed our conclusions about them for ourselves.

The present monograph, then, will study the romances of chivalry without taking Cervantes as a starting point. In Chapter IV, some suggestions about the relationship of the romances of chivalry to the Quijote will be offered.

Because of the extraordinary imprecision of the general conception of the romances of chivalry, it is necessary to define clearly the subject matter of this book. If we were discussing Golden Age epic poetry, no one would expect to find in it a treatment of the Cid, or the romancero, or of Ariosto, except perhaps as works indirectly associated with the genre, as antecedents, or as illustrations of the same forms or principles in the literatures of other countries. Similarly, if we were discussing the Spanish pastoral novel, one would not include Virgil, Theocritus, or Sannazaro, except in a discussion of predecessors.

Yet such confusion is precisely what we find among those who write on the Spanish romances of chivalry. From the beginnings of critical study of the genre to the present, following, perhaps, the well-known process by which works were attributed to famous authors (Ovid, King Solomon), the true romances of chivalry have seen themselves classified helter-skelter with foreign works of the most diverse languages and time periods and with original Spanish works which can scarcely be considered romances of chivalry. In part this is due to a confusion between chivalric material and romances of chivalry: ballads, for example, may deal with deeds of knights, such as Bernardo del Carpio, or even with the heroes of the romances of chivalry, such as Amadís de Gaula and the Caballero del Febo⁷, but this does not mean that they themselves are romances of chivalry. In part it is also due to the unfortunate confusion caused by the different meanings of the word «romance» in English and Spanish⁸.

Examples of this confusion are easily offered. In the first survey of Spanish romances, Vicente Salvá treated Apuleius' Golden Ass as if it were a romance of chivalry⁹. The French bibliographer Brunet included Tirso de Molina's Deleitar aprovechando with the romances¹⁰, and as late as the Catálogo de la biblioteca de [Pedro] Salvá (Barcelona, 1872) we find Heliodorus' Historia etiópica de los amores de Teágenes y Cariclea, to contemporary readers certainly the very antithesis of a romance of chivalry¹¹, included in this classification¹². A number of chivalric tales translated from French, such as Oliveros de Castilla, are commonly included with the Spanish romances, as are other translations, such as Roberto el Diablo and Clamades y Clarmonda, whose similarity with the Spanish romances is that they are fictional narratives in prose¹³. Even within the strictly Spanish material, the Amadís and the Palmerín series of romances attracted to themselves, by the same process, material that did not belong: Polindo was confused with the Palmerín series¹⁴, and Lepolemo, the Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros, and Belianís de Grecia were all considered at different times to be part of the Amadís cycle or works of Feliciano de Silva¹⁵.

Nineteenth-century critics and bibliographers may perhaps be excused for this confusion concerning the nature of the Spanish romances of chivalry. Yet the same errors are perpetuated by contemporary scholars who have had more opportunity to examine the works they deal with. While Henry Thomas correctly includes the Cifar, Tirant lo Blanch, Paris e Viana, Enrique fi de Oliva and other early works and translations in a chapter on antecedents, «The Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Peninsula before the Year 1500», and draws a clear distinction between them and the vogue that began about the time of the publication of the Amadís, in his standard reference work José Simón Díaz mixes them all together and for some unknown reason includes them all under the fifteenth century¹⁶. Following him, Maxime Chevalier does the same in Sur le publique du roman de chevalerie (Talence, 1968), and neither of the two collections of romances of chivalry published in Spain in this century -Volumes 6 and 9 of the NBAE¹⁷, and the unfortunate Aguilar volume of Felicidad Buendía¹⁸- distinguishes between works of different countries and periods of composition.

What, then, are the romances of chivalry, the topic of the present study? We can begin with a very simple criterion: only those romances of chivalry written in Spanish can be called, or should be treated together with, Spanish romances of chivalry. We can take a great step forward in clarifying the subject matter if we exclude works that are translations into Spanish from other languages¹⁹. But we are still left with too large and imprecise a body of texts. Consulting the nineteenth edition of the Academia dictionary, we find that a «libro de caballerías» is an «especie de novela antigua en que se cuentan las hazañas y hechos fabulosos de caballeros aventureros o andantes». The Diccionario de Autoridades says that «libros de caballerías se llaman aquellos que contienen hechos e historias fingidas de héroes fabulosos. Tomaron este nombre de que fingían que los héroes que hablaban en ellas eran caballeros armados»²⁰. And going yet further back, to Covarrubias, we find that libros de caballerías are «los que tratan de hazañas de cavalleros andantes, ficciones gustosas y artificiosas de mucho entretenimiento y poco provecho, como los libros de Amadís, de don Galaor, del cavallero del Febo y los demás»²¹.

So the romances are books which «tratan de hazañas de caballeros andantes», and the oldest definition, the closest to the time of the romances' greatest popularity, gives us some specific references: the books of Amadís and don Galaor, his brother, the Caballero del Febo, and «all the rest», thus reflecting the common conception that the romances of chivalry are unmanageable because of their number, though certainly there were no more of them than there were epic poems.

There are also internal references in the romances of chivalry which aid us in determining what books the authors were familiar with, and which knights they considered to be in the same category or class as the heroes of the books they were writing. Marcos Martínez, the author of the Espejo de príncipes or Caballero del Febo, Part III (see infra, «The Pseudo-Historicity of the Romances of Chivalry»), includes Amadís and his relatives, Primaleón, Cristalián de España, Olivante de Laura, Belianis de Grecia, and Felixmarte de Hircania. In the prologue to Olivante de Laura we find the Amadís and Palmerín families, and Clarián de Landanís. The author of Cirongilio de Tracia mentions an earlier romance, Felix Magno²².

Another source which we can use to discover what the contemporaries considered to be romances of chivalry are the criticisms of the romances, in which specific works are often named. (The criticisms are discussed more fully below). Juan de Valdés, in his Diálogo de la lengua, speaks of Amadís de Gaula, Palmerín, Primaleón, Esplandián, Florisando, Lisuarte, and the Caballero de la Cruz, and separates in a different group, as inferior works, other books which are actually translations: Guarino Mezquino, La linda Melosina, Reinaldos de Montalván con La Trapisonda, Oliveros de Castilla²³. Pedro Mexía refers to the Amadís, Lisuartes, and Clarianes²⁴; Malón de Chaide to the Amadises, Floriseles, Belianís, and Lisuarte²⁵. Mateo Alemán criticizes those women who read Belianís, Amadís, Esplandián, and the Caballero del Febo²⁶.

Rather than continue with lists of names, we can summarize the results obtained from this examination of titles, distinguishing those works thought to be romances of chivalry. There are constant references to the Amadís, and almost as frequent ones to Palmerín de Olivia and Primaleón. Closely following in numbers of citations are the later books of the Amadís family, such as Lisuarte de Grecia, Amadís de Grecia, and Florisel de Niquea, and in the early works there are more than a few references to Clarián de Landanís, a lengthy cycle, which evidently, from its popularity, deserves more study than it has received. In the later authors there are various references to Belianís de Grecia, the Caballero del Febo, and other later books²⁷. There are less frequent references to translations, such as Tristán, and even fewer to works such as Oliveros de Castilla and Partinuplés. Finally, I have not found a single reference anywhere (excluding the Quijote) to the Caballero Cifar, showing that its one edition of 1512 did not remove it from oblivion, and few to Tirant lo Blanch²⁸.

What seems clear from all this is that Golden Age readers had a clear and consistent concept of which works were, and which were not, romances of chivalry. Their preference for works written in Castilian shows that the use of language of composition as a criterion for identifying the Spanish romances of chivalry is a sensible one, and confirms that the foreign romances of chivalry available in translation were tangential works, having lost whatever influence they may have had in Castile in the fifteenth or earlier centuries. Certainly the works the contemporaries saw as being romances of chivalry had an important characteristic in common, besides their language of composition, and that was their length. These works range from moderately long to extremely long; the short, translated works such as Partinuplés and Enrique fi de Oliva are seldom referred to.

So we can arrive at a definition, partly positivist and partly empirical. A romance of chivalry is a long prose narration which deals with the deeds of a «caballero aventurero o andante» -that is, a fictitious biography. More precisely, the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spaniards (and I am unaware that the term «libros de caballerías» was widely used prior to the sixteenth century)²⁹ understood as «libros de caballerías» Montalvo's Amadís and the books written in Castilian subsequent to it, which are the ones we are dealing with in this book. As will be seen later, these romances have many internal elements in common, which also make them a cohesive group.

It can be noted in conclusion that the romances of chivalry which we will be dealing with are, then, those written in Castilian subsequent to the publication of the Amadís, including the Amadís itself and a few works, such as Palmerín de Olivia, published around that time though written slightly earlier. These books, it should be noted, were also the ones known to Cervantes, as they are the ones dealt with in the Quijote. Both in the «escrutinio de la librería» and in the conversations of the characters in the Quijote, the works named are the lengthy Castilian fictionalized biographies: Amadís, Palmerín, Felixmarte de Hircania, Cirongilio de Tracia, and so on. Translations into Castilian, short works, and works which are other than fictional biographies receive either the briefest and most infrequent of treatment (such as Tablante de Ricamonte, referred to in I, 16), or are not there at all. It is, then, the long, imaginary biographies of knights-errant, the «mainstream» works, which must be studied as potential sources of the Quijote.

In contrast with a genre such as the Golden Age epic poem, the subject of over 200 dense pages in which Frank Pierce outlines the history of its study in Spain³⁰, there is relatively little to be said about the criticism of the romances of chivalry, especially in the Golden Age itself. The difference in prestige between the two genres is the obvious explanation for this fact; the epic was, of course, a genre in continuous existence since classical antiquity, and one of the few ways in which Spanish Golden Age authors could directly imitate classical models. Like the other forms of prose fiction, except for the so-called «Byzantine» novel³¹, with its model, the «prose epic» of Heliodorus³², the romances of chivalry had no classical model, no pedigree nor tradition, and thus very little prestige. Like the illegitimate son who unobtrusively exists and may even do great things, but does not share in the glory of the family, the romances of chivalry were only discussed incidentally by the literary theorists of the day.

The most familiar comments made by contemporaries about the romances of chivalry are criticisms; the romances were more often criticized, as poorly written, lascivious, «mentirosos», than they were praised³³. These criticisms have been amply discussed and analyzed by other scholars³⁴ and are referred to elsewhere in this book; in my opinion they cannot be said to form part of the scholarship of the romances of chivalry, both because they are incidental comments, in many cases taken out of context (see note 138 to Chapter IV), and because most of the persons making these criticisms had not personally examined the romances, merely repeated and amplified comments of their predecessors. (The fact that these comments have been given so much attention in this century is due to their harmony with the opinions of certain modern scholars and their supposed similarity to what has been understood to be Cervantes' opinion)³⁵. However, we can find among them occasional voices that show a direct contact with the romances of chivalry, and, thus, more discriminating and intelligent commentary than usual.

The first of these more intelligent comments is that of Juan de Valdés. That Valdés had some direct knowledge of the romances can be concluded from the detailed comments made about them in the Diálogo de la lengua, and from the fact that the character Valdés had spent «diez años, los mejores de mi vida», on no more useful occupation than reading «estas mentiras». Although he criticizes as «mentirosos» (lacking verisimilitude) Esplandián, Florisando, Lisuarte [de Grecia], and the Cavallero de la Cruz [Lepolemo], and as «mentirosos» and «mal compuestos» the translations of foreign works referred to previously, for reasons he does not completely explain he praises «los quatro libros de Amadís, como... los de Palmerín y Primaleón, que por cierto respeto an ganado crédito conmigo»³⁶.

A true scholar such as Alonso López Pinciano, one of the most influential literary theorists of the sixteenth century, also shows some discrimination in his comments on the romances of chivalry, prima facie evidence of more direct knowledge of them than could be gained from reading the comments of others. Although he repeatedly compares the romances of chivalry with the Milesian fables, which «tienen acaescimientos fuera de toda buena imitacion y semejança a verdad»³⁷, he exempts some from a general condemnation: «no hablo de vn Amadís de Gaula, ni aun del de Grecia y otros pocos, los quales tienen mucho de bueno, sino de los demás, que ni tienen versimilitud, ni doctrina, ni aun estilo graue, y, por esto, las dezía un amigo mío "almas sin cuerpo"... y a los lectores y autores dellas, cuerpo sin alma»³⁸.

But the well-informed, as well as the favorable, comment on the romances of chivalry is a rarity in the Golden Age. We need mention only, to conclude, the valuable information given by the authors themselves in their prologues, which have been almost completely ignored³⁹, perhaps because the most accessible books, Amadís and Esplandián, lack both prologues and dedications. The criticisms to be found in the prologues -such as the famous attack of Feliciano de Silva on his predecessor Juan Díaz⁴⁰, or the comments of Ortúñez⁴¹- are directed at specific works rather than at the romances as a whole. And the sometimes eloquent explanations of the romances' purposes certainly reached a larger group of readers than did the attacks of the moralists and literary critics, and presumably influenced as well as represented the attitudes toward the romances of a certain segment of the reading public. The author of Palmerín de Olivia said that his work «está llena de yngenio e doctrina en todas sus partes... va en sentencias poderosa, en él estilo copiosa, en ninguna parte confusa, las palabras dizen con la materia, las sentencias ygualan con las cosas, guarda la maiestad en las personas, cuenta breve, proprio, natural, sin confusión de orden, mueve passiones quando quiere, propone, incita, persuade. Ystoria es adonde conoceréys las claras hazañas de vuestros mayores: en unos alteza de ánimo que fortuna no vence, en otros esfuerço divino que peligros no teme»⁴². In the prologue to Cirongilio de Tracia the author praises the protagonist, particularly «la piedad que en el tiempo de su mayor saña se halló en él. No se movió con yra a las batallas, mas con misericordia y clemencia que tuvo de los afligidos y voluntad de deshazer los tuertos y agravios, donde todos los príncipes deste tiempo pueden tomar enxemplo para más buenamente governarse, para que con justa razón sean comparados al esclarecido sol, bien como lo fue este bienaventurado cavallero en su tiempo, en tal manera que sobró a todos los del mundo en bondad, en las armas, en esfuerço de coraçon, en nobleza de ánimo, en virtud de ínclitas costumbres»⁴³.

These comments, although of great importance for the proper interpretation of the romances of chivalry -which always declared, sincerely or no, a moral intent- and for an understanding of their position in sixteenth-century culture, again do not constitute scholarship of the romances in the sense in which that term is usually used. Such scholarship can not be said to antedate the seventeenth century, and the first two centuries of study of the romances of chivalry were devoted almost exclusively to their bibliographical problems. It was only when there existed, first, access to texts and an accurate list of those romances which had been written, and second, information by which to distinguish the first editions and the relative order of composition of the romances, that deeper study could begin.

One cannot avoid mentioning, for its contribution to the bibliography of the romances of chivalry, the Registrum of Fernando Colón, illegitimate son of the discoverer⁴⁴, and the somewhat lesser-known list of books given to a monastery in Valencia by the Duke and Duchess of Calabria⁴⁵, both of whom were, like Colón, readers of the romances of chivalry (see infra). It is from these two lists of books that we have any information at all about a number of works (Leoneo de Hungría) and of editions (the earliest known edition of Esplandián, Sevilla, 1510), which have since disappeared.

Readers of this book may be already familiar with the name of Nicolás Antonio, who published in his Bibliotheca Hispana (1672), later Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, much bibliographical information about Spanish books of all periods⁴⁶. Antonio apparently felt a certain admiration for the romances of chivalry, and in the prologue to his bibliography offered a defense of them, comparing them to epics in prose⁴⁷. Included in his vast repertory are all the major Spanish romances of chivalry, and many of the minor ones. He ordinarily included only one or two editions of each. We find in his work Don Clarisel de las Flores, which he knew only in manuscript, as well as a number of works which have apparently disappeared and cannot be positively identified; Menéndez Pelayo made the irreverent suggestion that Antonio deliberately invented one such book (Penalva)⁴⁸. Be this as it may, his desire to include every book, no matter how slender the evidence for its existence, led him to unintentionally invent some Spanish books which only existed in other languages, such as Florimón, or the thirteenth book of Amadís (Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, II, 395-96), which are still found in standard bibliographies. He thus attained, with some justification, a reputation for inaccuracy in the entries concerning romances of chivalry.

It is worth noting that Nicolás Antonio used one of the most important collections of romances of chivalry, that known as the «Sapienza» collection, from the Roman university which owned it, consisting of books which originally belonged to the house of Urbino. Under colorful circumstances this collection left the Sapienza's Alessandrina library, where it was housed; it is now shared by the British Library, the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid, and the Hispanic Society of America⁴⁹.

Nicolás Antonio's comments, which were arranged alphabetically, were extracted, collected, and supplemented by the eighteenth century scholar Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy, who dedicated a section of his Bibliothèque des romans (1734)⁵⁰ to the Spanish romances of chivalry. He pointed out, sometimes with pleasure, the lacunae of Nicolás Antonio, indicated many more editions of the more popular romances, and mentioned for the first time some of the minor ones, such as Arderique, Claribalte, and Felixmarte de Hircania.

The first writer to discuss in print, however briefly, the content of the Spanish romances of chivalry was Francesco Severio Quadrio. In his Della storia, e della ragione d'ogni poesia, Volume IV (Milan, 1749), he gave the family trees of both the Palmerín and the Amadís families, and discussed how the latter were based, in his opinion, on the history of the early Gauls⁵¹.

The honor of being the first Spaniard to study the romances of chivalry must clearly fall to the Benedictine monk Martín Sarmiento (1695-1771). In his posthumous Memorias para la historia de la poesía y poetas españoles (Madrid, 1775; written about 1745), he discusses them briefly, commending them for their language and relating them to the medieval narrative (i. e., epic) tradition. A more interesting curiosity, however, is his still-unpublished «Disertación sobre el Amadís de Gaula», a copy of which is in the Ticknor collection in the Boston Public Library. According to Barton Sholod, who has studied it, Sarmiento «attempts to place the Amadís within the broad scope of Spanish chivalric literature which he separates into four stages or epochs. The first of these is characterized by the... Psuedo-Turpin, throughout the eleventh and twelfth-centuries; the second is the cycle of Crusades romances most typified in Spain by the thirteenth-century prose tale, La gran conquista de ultramar; the third encompasses the totally fanciful tales of the fourteenth and fifteenth-centuries centering about «Héroes fingidos» or «Caballeros andantes» of which Amadís is the prime example; finally, we have the most lofty but genuinely human chivalric tale which ironically breaks with the past tradition of «pure» epic-romance and creates the new realistic mode, Don Quijote de la Mancha»⁵². A Galician himself, Sarmiento began the modern debate about the original language of the Amadís by suggesting it was first written in Galician (Sholod, p. 195).

Sarmiento's «Disertación» was actually «part of a more extensive unpublished essay entitled La vida y escritos de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra» (Sholod, p. 189). Sarmiento was thus also the first to associate the study of the romances of chivalry with that of the Quijote.

At that time (the late eighteenth century), interest in Don Quijote as a typically Spanish work, or as the Spanish literary masterpiece, was beginning, and it is not surprising, then, to find that examination of the romances of chivalry became secondary to the study of the Quijote. We would do well to at least mention John Bowle, the first modern editor of the Quijote, who (the notes to his edition show) had studied well several romances of chivalry: Amadís de Gaula and Amadís de Grecia, Olivante de Laura, Palmerín de Olivia, and the Espejo de caballerías. He had some contact with a number of others, mentioned less frequently: Felixmarte de Hircania, Tirante el Blanco, Belianís de Grecia, the Espejo de príncipes, and Polindo⁵³. Bowle's comments have often been tacitly used by later Spanish editors.

Following the example of Sarmiento and Bowle in associating the study of the romances of chivalry with that of the Quijote, Diego Clemencín published in the first half of the nineteenth century the most important Quijote edition of that century (Madrid, 1833-39). Clemencín's substantial contributions to the knowledge of the romances of chivalry are discussed in «Don Quijote y los libros de caballerías: necesidad de un reexamen», included in this volume. Clemencín's notes to the Quijote are a treasure-trove of information about the romances; scarcely less valuable is his Biblioteca de libros de caballerías, consisting of bibliographical notes intended to be a supplement to his edition⁵⁴.

In the early nineteenth century, bibliographical information available about the romances of chivalry was approaching a satisfactory state, and there began to appear a series of articles or catalogues devoted specifically to the bibliography of the romances of chivalry. The earliest of these, that of Vicente Salvá, dates from 1827⁵⁵, and already we find included almost all of the titles of romances and most of the editions. Finding the romances too numerous to handle unless classified, he began dividing them into categories, a practice often followed by later writers yet a source of confusion: «Amadís de Gaula y su línea» (in which was included Lepolemo), «Palmerín de Oliva y su descendencia», «Romances [sic] españoles de caballeros independientes de las antedichas ramas», «Libros trasladados [traducidos] de otras lenguas», including those of the Round Table and of Charlemagne, «imitaciones ascéticas y morales», «historias con algún fondo de verdad, aunque desfigurados con sucesos caballerescos» (included are the chronicles of the Cid, and La doncella de Francia), and «libros de absoluta verdad histórica» (the Passo honroso).

Salvá, like a modern scholar, drew on a series of very diverse sources: bookseller's catalogues, the Quijote edition of Bowle as well as that of Juan Antonio Pellicer (Madrid, 1797-98), the works of Nicolás Antonio and Quadrio. Considering the handicaps he worked under, his work is a good one, marred only by his inclusion of works which no modern scholar would call romances of chivalry.

The most important contributor of the nineteenth century to our knowledge of the romances of chivalry, after Diego Clemencín, is unquestionably Pascual de Gayangos. Gayangos wrote a long introduction and the «Catálogo razonado de los libros de caballerías que hay en lengua castellana o portuguesa, hasta el año de 1800», found in Volume 40 of the BAE, and he published in that volume an edition of Amadís de Gaula that was to stand until the publication of that of Edwin Place in 1959-69, and an edition of the Sergas de Esplandián for which there is yet no published replacement⁵⁶.

In his «Catálogo razonado», again divided into categories, although different ones («libros del ciclo bretón, libros del ciclo carolingio, libros del ciclo 'greco-asiático' -los Amadises Palmerines e independientes-, historias y novelas caballerescas, libros a lo divino, libros fundados en asuntos históricos, y traducciones de poemas caballerescos, principalmente italianos»), Gayangos brought together all the previously published bibliographical information, including the rather unreliable data of the French bibliographer Brunet⁵⁷, and added a great deal of new information. Because he lived for some time in London, he was able to include information about the copies in the great Grenville collection of the British Museum (now British Library), and those in the private library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, the greatest manuscript collector of all time⁵⁸; he also included, for the first time, information on the many unique Spanish items in the former Imperial Library of Vienna. The only major source he did not have access to was the catalogue of Ferdinand Colon's library.

His detailed and intelligent annotations were to give Gayangos' catalogue a usefulness and reliability the previous ones had lacked. In fact, it has been the basis for all subsequent bibliographies of romances of chivalry, including, indirectly, my own. He revised his own catalogue for inclusion in Gallardo's Ensayo de una biblioteca española de libros raros y curiosos⁵⁹; his information was incorporated in the Catálogo de la biblioteca de Salvá⁶⁰, was the subject of an article by G. Brunet⁶¹, and is the foundation of the most widely used modern bibliography, that of Simón Díaz⁶².

In his lengthy «Discurso preliminar» Gayangos discusses the origin of the romances of chivalry in Spain and the controversies regarding the original language of composition of Amadís de Gaula and Palmerín de Inglaterra, both of which were claimed by the Portuguese. Of more lasting interest, however, are the analyses of a number of romances of chivalry which he provides. He summarizes for us most of the chivalric production of Feliciano de Silva, Palmerín de Olivia, and Primaleón, as well as others as diverse as Lepolemo and Florambel de Lucea. He was an alert reader, and pointed out, for example, the passages which show that Feliciano de Silva was the author of Lisuarte de Grecia (Book 7 of the Amadís family), Pedro de Luján of Silves de la Selva (Book 12 of the Amadís family), and Francisco Delicado of La lozana andaluza⁶³. He found a certain value and, in contrast with Clemencín (see infra), a certain diversion in the romances of chivalry, which make his commentaries easy to read and deserving of the circulation they have received in the widely circulated collection of Rivadeneira.

Since 1857, when Gayangos published his volume, there have appeared only two studies of the romances of chivalry which even attempt any comprehensive coverage of them⁶⁴. The first of these is that of Menéndez y Pelayo, in his Orígenes de la novela⁶⁵. In this book Menéndez y Pelayo dedicates two chapters to the romances of chivalry, the first discussing foreign works translated into Spanish, and the second those which he called «indígenos», or written in the languages of the Iberian peninsula. Besides a detailed examination of Amadís de Gaula, he spends more time than Gayangos discussing earlier works, in particular Tirant lo Blanch, the Caballero Cifar, and the recently discovered Curial y Güelfa. Because of his wide reading in Golden Age non-fiction, he was able to illustrate in some detail the increasing criticism to which the romances of chivalry were subjected in the sixteenth century. These are, however, his only real contributions. Never one to disguise his prejudices, he devotes the remainder of his second chapter to a discussion of why the romances of chivalry later than the Amadís, most of which he had not examined, were not only bad, but monstrous. Although «el mayor defecto del Esplandián es venir después del Amadís» (p. 404), Palmerín de Olivia «no es más que un calco servil de las principales aventuras de Amadís y de su hijo» (p. 416), and Feliciano de Silva was «el gran industrial literario, que por primera vez puso en España y quizá en Europa, taller de novelas» (p. 407). Following well-authorized practice, Menéndez y Pelayo simply embellished the comments of previous critics when he had no direct knowledge of the works he was studying⁶⁶. With his overemphasis on the early works and uninformed attacks on works later than the Amadís he has done the study of the romances of chivalry great harm.

In 1920 Sir Henry Thomas published his classic study, Spanish and Portuguese Romances of Chivalry, in which he joined two earlier papers with others given as lectures at Cambridge University in 1917⁶⁷. Essentially a bibliographer, later to serve for many years as head of the British Museum's Department of Printed Books, Thomas worked extensively with that library's large collection of romances of chivalry. In discussing the romances themselves, in chapters on the Amadís and Palmerín romances, and another on «Smaller Groups and Isolated Romances», he covers, though carefully, familiar ground, bringing together the contributions of his predecessors. He summarizes Grace Williams' discussion of the origins of the Amadís, and its indebtedness to the French romances of the Breton and Charlemagne cycles⁶⁸, and William Purser's definitive resolution of the question of the Portuguese or Spanish authorship of Palmerín de Inglaterra in favor of the former by an examination of both the Spanish and Portuguese texts⁶⁹. Thomas also summarizes his own publication, in which he settled that Feliciano de Silva was the author of Books 7 and 9 of the Amadís series⁷⁰, and also shows (pp. 302-09) that the second book of Lepolemo, Leandro el Bel, was in fact a translation from the Italian.

More than half of his study, however, is devoted to assessing the popularity of the romances of chivalry both in Spain and abroad. He arranged the romances into a list by date of publication, thus showing clearly when they found the greatest favor and when their decline in popularity began; he added to Menéndez y Pelayo's collection of comments by non-fictional writers on the romances of chivalry. The discussion of the translations of the Spanish romances into other languages could have been written by none other than a competent bibliographer, and it is only very recently⁷¹ that any attempt has been made to improve on his treatment of the subject.

Since the publication in 1920 of the book of Henry Thomas there has been no attempt at a comprehensive treatment of the Spanish romances of chivalry. It is, however, not out of order for us to review the most important, though more limited contributions which have been made over the last fifty years. Most of this work has, for obvious reasons, centered on the romances which are most accessible. Much has been written about Amadís de Gaula. Edwin Place, in particular, dedicated much of his career to working with this book, preparing a critical edition based on the earliest complete text, that of 1508⁷², and wrote articles on its original language of composition⁷³, its relationship with earlier chivalric material⁷⁴, the date of Montalvo's redaction⁷⁵, and to other problems related with the book⁷⁶. Others have also discussed the interpretation of the Amadís of Montalvo and the characteristics of the primitive Amadís which preceded it⁷⁷, and while this volume was in preparation, Frank Pierce published in the Twayne World Authors Series a volume on Amadís de Gaula (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1976).

The Sergas de Esplandián, available in Gayangos' edition, has been the subject of important studies by José Amezcua and Samuel Gili Gaya⁷⁸. Two volumes of studies accompanied the recent publication of an edition of Palmerín de Olivia⁷⁹. Maxime Chevalier has investigated a number of later romances in a search for the influence of Ariosto⁸⁰, and just as Place discussed the influence of the Amadís on Cervantes⁸¹, Martín de Riquer, author of an important series of studies of Tirant lo Blanch and of historical chivalry⁸², has also discussed the influence of the romances of chivalry on Cervantes⁸³.

Beyond this, it can safely be said that studies of the romances of chivalry have tended to deal more with tangential works, or with tangential aspects of the major works, than with the truly central works and questions. Thus, of the later books of the Amadís cycle, Florisando, Book 6, and the second Lisuarte de Grecia, Book 8, which are without any doubt the least important and least influential books of the entire cycle, have each been the subject of an interpretative essay⁸⁴, while the vastly more important later books of the series have never been the subject of a major article. Both the Amadís and the Palmerín series have been the subject of monographs, but both of these monographs discuss the influence of the series in England⁸⁵. Feliciano de Silva has been studied biographically⁸⁶, as author of the Segunda Celestina⁸⁷, and as friend to Núñez de Reinoso⁸⁸, but the only study of his romances of chivalry to date is focused on the study of the pastoral elements in them⁸⁹. Attention has been drawn to an earlier romance, Claribalte, because of its author, Fernández de Oviedo, rather than because of its literary value, which most agree to be slight⁹⁰. More attention has been focused on the reading of romances of chivalry in the New World⁹¹ than has been on the reading of them in Spain.

Some recent theses suggest that this orientation of research on the romances of chivalry may be changing⁹². Nevertheless, in Chapter VIII have suggested some topics for future research and some avenues which are worth exploring.

Like most forms of literature, the Spanish romances of chivalry were not created spontaneously nor ex nihilo. Although their sudden popularity at the beginning of the sixteenth century might, on superficial examination, suggest a new phenomenon, they have antecessors and are derived from an earlier chivalric tradition. Like various other types of Spanish literature, they are directly derived from the literature of a foreign country: in this case, French Arthurian literature. In a word, Amadís de Gaula, on which, directly or indirectly, are modeled all the sixteenth-century romances of chivalry, is neo-Arthurian (Pierce, p. 47).

In France the romance of chivalry was more of a medieval phenomenon than it was in Spain, more directly linked to the epic poetry in whose prosifications it began. It was primarily French versions of Arthurian material which, through Spanish translations and adaptations, gave birth to the Amadís and the romances of chivalry based on this work. Although the surviving Spanish texts are neither complete nor numerous, it is clear that the Hispano-Arthurian literature was widely circulated among the nobility, as it was one of the few forms of fiction available in the Middle Ages, even to that class able to indulge itself with pleasure reading in an age of manuscripts.

Before proceeding to discuss the existing Hispano-Arthurian literature, it is worth pointing out that I am deliberately omitting, as irrelevant, discussion of a work which some readers might expect to find here: the Caballero Cifar, which, I am convinced, has little in common with the Spanish romances of chivalry as they were understood by Cervantes and other readers of the sixteenth century. Even a superficial examination shows how different the work is. It is presumably based on earlier sources, perhaps some Arabic ones, but in any event, it is clearly not French in inspiration, it is not primarily a tale of love and combat, of deeds done by a knight in love with a sometimes disdainful lady, and it is much more moral and didactic in its intent than the other romances⁹³. Although there is some influence of Arthurian material, particularly in Book III⁹⁴, the work is far from being primarily chivalric in orientation, nor did it have any discernible influence on the romances which were to follow it. The supposed discovery of a source for Sancho Panza in the squire Ribaldo has been refuted so many times that it will not be further belabored here⁹⁵.

Arthurian literature in Spain has been surveyed by Entwistle, more briefly by María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, and recently in a scholarly bibliography by Harvey Sharrer⁹⁶. The present author can do little but summarize their conclusions. Prose literature is represented by texts of the Merlin, Lancelot, and Tristan families, though the texts are either fragmentary or relatively late. Pietsch, in his Spanish Grail Fragments⁹⁷, published the fragmentary versions of the Libro de Josep Abarimatia, the Estoria de Merlin, and Lançarote found in a fifteenth-century manuscript now in the University of Salamanca. A late 14th or early 15th-century Castilian and Aragonese manuscript of Tristán de Leonís was published by George T. Northup (University of Chicago Press, 1928). There is also a sixteenth-century copy of a lengthy fifteenth-century manuscript of Lançarote in the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid; of this latter only a few fragments have been published⁹⁸, though Sharrer has promised a complete edition. The other texts available in Castilian are late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century imprints: Tristán de Leonís (Valladolid, 1501⁹⁹ and Seville, 1528¹⁰⁰ and 1534), the Baladro del Sabio Merlín (Burgos, 1498)¹⁰¹, and the Demanda del Sancto Grial (Toledo, 1515)¹⁰².

The influence which these Arthurian texts, especially the Lancelot, had in the creation of Amadís de Gaula has been discussed in greatest detail by Grace Williams¹⁰³, though it has also been commented on by Entwistle, Bohigas, Le Gentil, and Lebesque, among others¹⁰⁴. Although María Rosa Lida has pointed out some influence from the Troy legends¹⁰⁵, it can be safely said that Amadís generally follows the outlines of the central plot of the Lancelot. An unknown youth of royal descent falls in love with the wife or daughter of a king at whose court he serves. The knight rescues his lady from an abductor, thus earning her love or promise of love; the lady, for erroneous reasons, spurns the knight, who abandons the court and lives in solitude. Eventually he learns his true identity and is reunited with the lady. Court intrigue and discord among factions of the nobility play a major role in both works, leading to a complicated plot structure. Characters with magical powers, both friendly and hostile, appear in both works. There is an exaltation of adventure, honor, and love. Amadís, then, according to María Rosa Lida, from whom the foregoing is paraphrased, «offers a synthesis of the distinctive features of a typical Arthurian romance» («Arthurian Legend», p. 413).

That the influence of the Arthurian texts is channeled almost exclusively through the Amadís (Entwistle, p. 225) is due to the unique circumstances surrounding the composition, revision, and diffusion of this work. The dating of the composition of the Amadís in the fourteenth century, when the Arthurian romances were circulating widely in manuscript, is not disputed (Pierce, p. 39). For reasons not known to us, a fifteenth-century gentleman, Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, took this older text and revised it, abbreviating it, adapting it, perhaps, more to the tastes of the Spanish, with purer love and more emphasis on combat, and certainly improving its language and style. This revised version, published in the sixteenth-century, was thus a link between the medieval and the Renaissance periods: a work of medieval inspiration, composition, and themes, but packaged and distributed in a way that Renaissance readers would find attractive.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the popularity of Montalvo's Amadís in sixteenth-century Spain. It had far and away the largest number of editions and copies printed, and has been, from its publication, the most widely read Spanish romance of chivalry, a distinction which it holds through the present day. Even among those who had not read the work, almost all literate, and many illiterate Spaniards knew the name of the work, just as most recognize the title Don Quijote today. Amadís was one of the limited number of romances made into ballads and plays; it was the romance used by Bernal Díaz del Castillo in his famous comparison (quoted by Thomas, p. 82). It was «a recognized manual of chivalry and courtesy» (Thomas, p. 63). Phrases from the Amadís, such as «Agrajes sin obras», entered the Spanish language¹⁰⁶, which happened with no other romance.

Just as the writings of Aristotle defined what would later be called the field of philosophy, so the Amadís defined what the romance of chivalry would be in Spain. From Amadís the other romances took their basic framework: the traveling prince, the constant tournaments and battles, the remote setting in a mountainous, forested (never desert or jungle) land, the interest in honor and fame. Variations on the basic pattern, such as the dama belicosa, are really minor. To use a protagonist who was not of royal blood, to have a visit to a realistic Spain (or any other location the Spanish readers would know something about) would have been felt as a major break with this venerable tradition, not to be made until the Lazarillo broke many conventions simultaneously.

It is just as difficult to exaggerate the popularity and influence of the Amadís in sixteenth-century Spanish letters and culture as it is to explain the precise reasons why it was so popular. One contemporary reader, Juan de Valdés, praised its language (the quotation is reproduced on p. 11), and certainly in an age sensitive to style this must have been a fact, though presumably not an exclusive one. Perhaps a nationalistic factor, as well, in that Amadís was seen as a clearly Castilian, rather than foreign, work¹⁰⁷, may have contributed to the book's appeal in Spain. Probably, though, the simple fact that the book contains a good story, with lots of exciting action, was most important.

For action the Amadís has, above all things. Amadís, set adrift by his unmarried (though secretly pledged) mother, is raised at the court of King Languines of Scotland, where he falls in love with Oriana, daughter of King Lisuarte of Great Britain, also living with the King of Scotland. Amadís is dubbed a knight by his father, Perión de Gaula, though their relationship is unknown to both. He rapidly distinguishes himself, aiding in the defeat of the evil King Abiés of Ireland. Enchanted by the evil magician Arcaláus, then freed, he also distinguishes himself in a great tournament held in London, and must free Oriana and defeat the usurping king Barsinán. His assistance to Queen Briolanja of Sobradisa causes the jealousy of Oriana.

This summary, which ignores a host of minor characters and adventures, and which could well provide material in itself for a lengthy novel, covers only one of the four books of Montalvo's Amadís. Book II describes the marvels of the Ínsola Firme, including the Arco de los Leales Amadores, which Amadís successfully attempts. Upon receiving a letter from Oriana accusing him of disloyalty, he makes his famous retirement to the island of the Peña Pobre, abandoning his arms, which causes those he has left behind to fear his death. Upon receipt of a letter assuring him of Oriana's good graces, he sets out to meet her at the castle of Miraflores, with further adventures on the way, but he must leave the court again after the mind of King Lisuarte is poisoned by treasonous advice from friends of Falangris, brother of Lisuarte.

In Book III Oriana gives birth to Esplandián, son of Amadís, whose name is written on his body in unintelligible letters; the infant is stolen by a lioness and raised by the hermit Nasciano. Further adventures and travels of Amadís are highlighted by the defeat of a monster, the endriago, on the Ínsola del Diablo. While Amadís is away, travelling in Germany, Constantinople, and other parts of Europe, King Lisuarte has made plans for Oriana to marry the emperor of Rome; Amadís must attack the fleet taking Oriana to her husband.

In Book IV, after an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile all the various dissidents, Amadís decides that war with Lisuarte is the only course open. After two great battles, peace is restored by the intervention of Nasciano, who, bringing Esplandián into the story in a more active way, reconciles Lisuarte to the marriage of Oriana and Amadís. After the various festivities which accompany the marriage of Amadís and Oriana, Lisuarte is kidnapped and enchanted. The book ends on an inconclusive note (also setting a precedent for the romances of chivalry; see infra), with Esplandián being armed a knight.

Once again we must emphasize the abbreviated and incomplete nature of this summary of a complicated series of characters and events, typically the despair of anyone who tries to summarize this book or any of the later romances of chivalry. Surely, however, contemporary readers, with time to spare and an interest in a captivating, complicated narrative, must have found this very quantity of characters and events to be one of the most attractive features of the book. Although the number of events and characters does not allow for any great development of personality -characters are essentially static and unchanging, always good or evil if such is their nature- this deficiency by modern standards was not seen as such by readers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whom, we may assume, were not interested in personality development, internal problems of the characters, or very much beyond the conflicts, loves, and prophecies found in the book.

These latter, which were not mentioned in the summary above, are another reflection of the Arthurian romances in the Amadís, since the cryptic prophecies of Merlin, usually a combination of vague comments and specific references to some contemporary events, are echoed in the frequent appearances of Urganda la Desconocida. Urganda is a mysterious character in herself, whose origin and function are not fully explained. She frequently appears in the story, assisting Amadís, and delivers advice -ignored at the characters' peril- about the future. In general, she is an important contribution to the «mythic character» of the romance so well described by Samuel Gili Gaya in his published lecture (cited above).

In tracing the castilian history of the romances of chivalry, we could begin worse than by pointing out that the romances of chivalry, as a genre, are firmly centered within the sixteenth century, give or take a few decades at each end. It is true that the Amadís, which would circulate so widely in printed form, existed as early as the fourteenth century, and it is also true that there are a number of Hispano-Arthurian texts of earlier centuries. But as with most texts in the age of manuscripts, these were limited in their circulation. Entwistle's affirmation that there was «an attempt to carry some knowledge of this [Hispano-Arthurian] literature by means of ballads to the unlettered masses»¹⁰⁸ is supported only by a very limited number of ballad texts, some of uncertain date (the ballads about Amadís were written no earlier than the sixteenth century), and a lack of evidence about the public these ballads were originally created for.

As stated in the preceding chapter, the Hispano-Arthurian texts are principally translations. As with most translations, the literary contribution they made, seen in a European perspective, is slight. The creative literary energies in Castile were not devoted to romances of chivalry: there is no figure of the significance of Chrétien de Troyes, Malory, Wace, or Layamon among those producing chivalric texts in medieval Castile, and there are no known translations from Castilian to non-peninsular languages. Also, these medieval Hispano-Arthurian texts were «not the begetters of Spanish chivalry save through their creation of Amadís de Gaula» (Entwistle, p. 225); in fact, they were of little interest during the last half of the fifteenth century. It was in the earlier court of Juan II when chivalry (as opposed to warfare) was most favored in the Spanish Middle Ages; Enrique IV, of course, cared little for chivalric literature¹⁰⁹, and the Reyes Católicos, though not completely immune to its charms¹¹⁰, took their responsibilities too seriously, and were too interested in concluding the reconquest, to have much time for idle reading.

The romances of chivalry, then, benefited greatly in their extraordinary popularity in the sixteenth century from the possibilities that printing offered, and in this sense the so familiar Castilian atraso, by which this chivalric material, medieval in inspiration, arrived in Castile later, has a positive side. Because printed works, though still expensive by modern standards, were far cheaper than manuscripts, lesser nobles, and even some well to-do bourgeois, could share in the reading of the romances, something not possible in other countries at an earlier date. Yet still, contrary to a widely-held misconception, the romances of chivalry were not among the first books published after the introduction of printing in Spain in the last third of the fifteenth century. Not only such religious works as the Vita Christi of Mendoza and the Vida beata of Juan de Lucena, not only doctrinal works such as those of Cartagena were printed during the late 1470's, 1480's, and early 1490's, but also the novels of Juan de Flores and Diego de San Pedro were published, without, however, a single romance of chivalry being published in Castile during this period¹¹¹.

Printers turned their attention to chivalric material rather suddenly, in the final years of the fifteenth century and beginning of the sixteenth, as if motivated by a previously non-existent demand on the part of a body of readers -the nobles- not in a position, or not needing, during the final years of the reconquest, to divert themselves with this type of literature. As with other forms of literature, the printers first began by publishing materials already available in manuscript; thus we see published a series of short, translated works with a chivalric flavor, such as Oliveros de Castilla (1499), Paris e Viana (c. 1494), Enrique fi de Oliva (1498), and others, and also some much longer works, such as the Baladro del sabio Merlín (1498), the missing Merlín y demanda del Santo Grial (1500), and no doubt the missing princeps of the Amadís.¹¹²

The brief works, the translations from the French, did not survive the competition from the publication of the Amadís (before 1508), the Sergas de Esplandián (before 1510), and the new works, such as Palmerín de Olivia, which began to be published about 1510, when the existing chivalric literature available to the printers had all been published¹¹³. We can only speculate about the reasons, and none of the potential reasons would completely explain the phenomenon. Printing, more compact than handwriting, and the use of paper rather than parchment or vellum made economically possible longer works than were possible in the age of parchment, and the in creased speed with which printed material could be read also made increased length desirable¹¹⁴. The language of the earlier works may have seemed archaic to the readers, and the style more primitive¹¹⁵. The Castilian readers may well have preferred more sober and action-filled romances, a taste already seen in the choice of foreign works to translate¹¹⁶. In any event, as Hall points out, even the works, such as Tristán de Leonís, that to some extent survived this period did not retain popularity past the first third of the century¹¹⁷.

The so-called «indigenous» or native romances of chivalry, which were to set the pattern for those that would appear throughout the next half century, began to be published, as already stated, around 1510. The first «wave» of publication ended, approximately, with the publication in 1519 of Oviedo's Claribalte by the Valencian printer Juan de Viñao, who had, two years previously, published the little-known and curious Arderique¹¹⁸. With the exception of the Amadís and the Sergas de Esplandián, which apparently reached their current form in the fifteenth century¹¹⁹, it may be safely assumed that most of these works were written only shortly before their publication, and with publication in view. They include the sixth book of Amadís, Florisando, of Páez de Ribera (1510), and Book 7, Lisuarte de Grecia, of Feliciano de Silva (1514), although we should add that contemporaries apparently did not share the modern tendency to look at books such as these primarily as members of their respective «families», it was difficult, if not impossible, for a reader of the time to assemble most of the books of any «family», for which reason these books were more often read and discussed as individual works. It includes also Palmerín de Olivia and its sequel Primaleón (1511 and 1512), and the first book of Clarián de Landanís (1518); perhaps we should also mention the translation of the lengthy Guarino Mesquino from the Italian (1512)¹²⁰.

These works, if it is legitimate to speak of them as a group, are still relatively unsophisticated works, and except for Amadís and Esplandián, only Palmerín and Primaleón were to achieve any enduring success or fame.

Before leaving this early period of the Castilian romances of chivalry, it is appropriate to mention the publication of a number of semihistorical works with some chivalric elements, either written shortly before their publication or, more often, written earlier and published for the first time in the early sixteenth century to satisfy the tastes of much the same public as that which read the romances. These include the Crónica and the Estoria del noble cavallero Fernán González (Seville, 1509, and Toledo, 1511, respectively), the two chronicles of the Cid (Burgos, 1512, and Toledo, 1526, both reprinted by the Kraus Reprint Company, New York, 1967), the Crónica sarracina of Pedro del Corral, published in 1499 and several times reprinted¹²¹, and also some lesser-known works such as the Libro de dichos y hechos de Alonzo Aroa (Valencia, 1527). The current distinction made between these «historical» works and the «fictional» romances of chivalry, all of which declared themselves to be purely historical works, was certainly seen vaguely by most contemporary readers, some of whom probably did not see it at all. However, quite apart from the question of their value as historical sources, the entertainment value of these semihistorical works can easily be seen. Their elaborate descriptions of castles and armor, the numerous and fully described battles and tournaments, the almost superhuman protagonists, show that they have more in common with the romances of chivalry than is usually realized¹²². Some books, in fact, have title pages with an illustration of a chivalric scene, indistinguishable from those of the romances of chivalry¹²³.

The romances of chivalry's greatest popularity in Castile coincides neatly with the reign of Carlos V (1517-1555). During this time the composition and publication of new romances, and the reprinting of the classics of the genre, flourished as it never had before and never would again. New romances were published at the rate of almost one per year during this period, and there were twelve editions of the Amadís and eight of Palmerín. It was during this period that many of the romances which were to prove most popular were written: the works of Feliciano de Silva, Belianís de Grecia, Part I of the Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros.

That this great popularity of the romances was due to the model of and encouragement from the royal court is beyond question. We know that Carlos, so completely Hispanized and so given to chivalric spectacles and festivities¹²⁴, read romances, and judged Belianís so pleasing that he requested the composition of a continuation¹²⁵. Taking advantage of the interest at court, Dionís Clemente, author of Valerián de Hungría, pretended that he received the manuscript of his work from a knight of Carlos' brother Hernando, whom he met while accompanying Carlos to the court held in Worms in 1521. Although no romances were dedicated to Carlos, several were to members of the high nobility who formed part of court society. (See «Who Read the Romances of Chivalry?» in this volume). The French king François I first read the Amadís, and became enamoured of it, while being held captive in Madrid by Carlos (Thomas, p. 199), and Herberay des Essarts, who translated the Amadís into French, says that «maintesfois plusieurs gentilz hommes d'Espagne m'auoient loué [Amadís]» (prologue to the 1540 edition).

Other factors may have played some role in the romances' popularity. Their harmony with the spirit which led to the conquest and colonization of the New World, basic parts of which took place during Carlos V's reign, may possibly have been an additional factor in their popularity¹²⁶. Yet we can hardly help but conclude that the lack of interest in chivalric fiction of Carlos' more sober son, Felipe II, was a factor in the books' decline. It is hard to picture Felipe taking a romance of chivalry to read at the Escorial¹²⁷.

We may well pause a moment to reflect on the fact that the authors of the romances of chivalry were almost invariably obscure men, or in one case (Cristalián de España) an obscure woman, presumably not in close contact with the literary circles of the time. The only exceptions that could be made are Feliciano de Silva (discussed later, in Chapter VI), who achieved renown primarily from his composition of romances, Fernández de Oviedo, who rejected his own romance Claribalte when he reached a more mature age, Jerónimo de Urrea, whose Clarisel de las Flores was not published during his lifetime and still remains for the most part in manuscript¹²⁸, and such definitely secondary authors as Jerónimo de Contreras¹²⁹, Pedro de Luján¹³⁰, and Antonio de Torquemada¹³¹. Many of the romances are anonymous, and a majority of the known authors are known only from their composition of the romance; into this category would go Diego Ortúñez de Calahorra, Pedro de la Sierra, and Marcos Martínez, authors of the Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros, Pàez de Ribera and Juan Díaz, authors of Books 6 and 8 of the Amadís, Jerónimo Fernández, author of Belianís, Dionís Clemente, author of Valerián de Hungría, and so on. Similarly, none of the well-known authors of the period wrote a romance of chivalry: neither Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, nor Guevara, nor Jorge de Montemayor, nor even Ercilla attempted the composition of a romance, to say nothing of Lope, who tried virtually every other genre.

This phenomenon can only be explained when one considers that the romances of chivalry were the least «literary» type of literature being written at that time. There was a unanimous pretense that the works were true histories, only rescued from oblivion and modernized by a sixteenth-century contemporary (see infra, «The Pseudo-Historicity of the Romances of Chivalry»); this in itself could encourage the anonymous publication of romances. Like historical writing, the chivalric romance was a form of literature in which innovation was seen as unnecessary -at least overt innovation, since there is a subtle evolution, found in the increasing sophistication of conversation and in the expanding love element and greater role of women. Thus, despite the comment of Cervantes' canónigo, there was little about the romances to attract an author who wished to win praise for his literary abilities, and the romances remained in the hands of an other class of writers, not incompetent at their task, perhaps, but spiritually far from the intelligentsia of the day.

We should also remember that the world portrayed in the romances of chivalry was one which would appeal strongly to a section of Spanish society, but only to a section. It was a simple world, devoid of subtle philosophical or religious concerns. An individual could win fame and fortune primarily through his military abilities, whether exercised in serious battles or in less serious activities such as tournaments; scholarship and the world of books played, in the romances, a very secondary role. The knights-errant were often possessed of a crusading spirit and a religious element is always present. This is one of the ways these romances most reflect the values of Spanish culture, though ostensibly set in very remote kingdoms and epochs; this crusading spirit presumably influenced the young reader Teresa de Cepeda, and even more Loyola, also a reader of romances of chivalry (Rivadaneyra's life of Loyola, BAE, 60, 14^b), who sometimes acted like a knight-errant a lo divino (Rivadeneyra, pp. 17^a and 18^a). Yet the knights' faith was the simple faith of the soldier, an uncritical acceptance of the correctness of Catholicism and the necessity of helping it, with arms, to vanquish infidels.

For all of these reasons, then, it is not surprising that the intelligentsia were to turn against the romances. The criticisms to which we have previously referred began, logically enough, when the romances had become sufficiently popular to attract the critics' attention; the earliest comments are from the 1520's. The early comments, such as those of Valdés, offer some intelligent observations, and I have remarked elsewhere («An Early Censor: Alejo Venegas», in Medieval, Renaissance and Folklore Studies in Honor of John Esten Keller [Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1981, pp. 229-41) how the scholarly humanist Venegas played an important part in the attacks on the romances. However, these attacks rapidly deteriorated from sensible observations about the inherent defects of the books themselves to a series of complaints about the pernicious effects that they allegedly had on the souls of the readers, and how the books occupied time which might have been more usefully employed in reading more spiritually uplifting material. In fact, the criticisms of the romances degenerated into a series of topoi, which were repeated by various moralist writers who had no direct knowledge of the works they attacked¹³².

One effect of the criticisms was to place the authors of the romances somewhat on the defensive. In the prologues and dedications of the later romances, in which the authors often discuss their works and their motives, there is a constant emphasis on the benefits readers would receive from them. One author, Diego Ortúñez de Calahorra, included explicit moral instruction in his work¹³³, but all the romances, according to their authors, offered «buenos ejemplos» to their readers, showing them the model of a virtuous knight, who never acted out of self-interest¹³⁴. In his concern for his subjects and for the persons he encountered in his travels, in his interest in seeing that justice was done and that right triumphed over wrong, in his humility, chastity, and calm temperament (mesura), the hero of the romances of chivalry offered to the readers the supposedly beneficial picture of the ideal medieval ruler.

Another result of the criticism of the romances as immoral and godless works was the production of the libros de caballerías a to divino. As with other types of literature a to divino¹³⁵, these were works of explicitly religious content, in which familiar religious and moral material -Biblical, in the case of the best known of these romances, the Cavallería celestial of Jerónimo de San Pedro (1554)¹³⁶- is adapted to the external trappings of the romance of chivalry. The knights are saints or Biblical figures, and encounter adventures either taken directly from the religious material or of clear religious inspiration. None of these romances achieved any great popularity, and there is considerable doubt whether they succeeded in supplanting the original romances of chivalry as escape reading for idle readers; perhaps instead they were read by a new class of readers who were unable, because of the criticisms of them, to read the original romances. It is worth noting that despite its religious subject matter and presumably noble purpose, the Cavallería celestial achieved the dubious distinction of being placed on the Index, presumably for some doctrinal error, which none of the secular romances were (Thomas, p. 169)¹³⁷.

Although the criticism of the romances was followed by a decline in the composition of new romances, it has not been possible to establish the relationship between these two trends. It is not clear that the criticisms of the romances, which are well-known today since they have been assembled and studied by scholars, were known to the readers of the romances; it is more logical to assume that the works in which these criticisms are found (La conversión de la Magdalena, say, or Vives' De institutione fæminae christianae; the Diálogo de la lengua was not published until 1737) were primarily read by readers of a religious or moral inclination who would not have read the romances, nor much other secular literature¹³⁸, even if the criticisms had never been made. There are many other alternative explanations for the declining interest of potential authors in the romances. The general rise in literary standards, due in greatest measure to contacts with Italy, gave rise not only to the poetry of Garcilaso but to the pastoral novel, which made a spectacular appearance on the literary scene in the 1550's. The same period also saw the introduction of the Renaissance epic. The Lazarillo, with its anti-hero, as a response to the romances of chivalry has been suggested by many scholars¹³⁹.

But certainly one of the principal causes, if not the single most important cause, of the decline in composition of new romances was the abdication of Carlos V in favor of his son Felipe. That Carlos' reign ended in 1555 is no coincidence. The last work of Feliciano de Silva, the Cuarta parte de Florisel de Niquea, was published in 1551, marking the conclusion of the Amadís «cycle» in Spanish¹⁴⁰. Palmerín de Inglaterra, the last of the Palmerín series to be published in Spanish¹⁴¹, appeared in 1547-48. The Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros and Felixmarte de Hircania, published in 1555 and 1556 respectively, were almost surely written during the final years of Carlos' reign. Olivante de Laura, published in 1564, bears a dedication from the printer rather than the author, which suggests that it had been written earlier. The «true» Part II of Clarián de Landanís (rather than the unrelated Book 2 of Part I, mistakenly used by the Toledan printer Juan de Villaquirán in making up his set in the 1520's) was published in 1550, though written earlier. After the death of Carlos the only new romances to be published are unquestionably secondary works -Febo el Troyano, a plagiarism of the Espejo de príncipes¹⁴² Parts II-IV of the latter romance, Leandro el Bel, actually a translation from the Italian (Thomas, pp. 302-09), Rosián de Castilla, a short work which in several ways is not a true romance, and Policisne de Boecia, which was published only three years before Part I of the Quijote, an unfortunate coincidence which has given rise to a conclusion I believe unfounded (see n. 320 infra).

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the romances of chivalry disappeared even though the composition of new romances had been abandoned. The reprinting of the major romances, and even some of the minor ones, continued throughout the last half of the sixteenth century. Lisuarte de Grecia, Amadís de Grecia, and Florisel de Niquea (Parts I and II) were each reprinted three times during the reign of Felipe II. Amadís de Gaula and the Espejo de príncipes each went through five additional editions, the Sergas de Esplandián and Palmerín de Olivia two, Primaleón four, and so on. As I have explained elsewhere (infra), this publication of new editions of familiar texts did not occur evenly, but in several waves of publication, and the dates of these waves allow the conclusion that the romances were still read by the upper and upper-middle classes. Although the last great batch of reprints occurred during 1587-1590, stopped by the national mourning which followed the numerous deaths in the defeat of the Armada, it should be noted that Parts I and II of one romance, the Espejo de príncipes, were reprinted as late as 1617, after the publication of both parts of the Quijote, and that this edition was not a commercial failure is shown by the fact that the same bookseller (Juan de Bonilla) published an edition of Parts III and IV of the same work six years later.

Detailed information on the sixteenth-century book trade within Spain is not available, the only surviving documents being prepublication contracts, inventories of books made at death, and fragmentary information about private libraries¹⁴³. There is no later parallel to the Registrum of Fernando Colón (supra), which notes precisely the place and date of publication of a book, plus the place, date, and cost of its purchase, information valuable for the early years of the sixteenth century which has not yet been fully exploited; the published information about Colón's library ends at 1530. But information is available, in considerable detail, about the book trade between Spain and the Spanish colonies in the New World in the later sixteenth century, because of the legal requirement for inventories of goods shipped, and the systematic conservation of such documents. These inventories are particularly valuable for the years after 1580 (Leonard, p. 132). Although the Spanish colonies' reading tastes may not have been identical with those of Spain, the mother country and her colonies were closer culturally at that time than they were ever to be again, and the publications, for example, of the Cromberger family, which benefited from its Sevillian location to publish to a considerable extent for the New World trade, do not differ as dramatically as Leonard believes from those of publishers in other parts of Spain whose New World trade was less¹⁴⁴. Lacking evidence to the contrary, then, these documents provide some information about Spanish reading tastes in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

The first, I believe, to obtain from records of book shipments to the New World information about reading tastes was Francisco Rodríguez Marín, who found that in 1605, the same year as the publication of Part I of the Quijote, numerous romances of chivalry of all types were sent to the New World¹⁴⁵. It was Irving Leonard, however, who has most thoroughly investigated these documentary materials¹⁴⁶. He found that romances of chivalry remained an important item in the book trade throughout the last years of the sixteenth century and in the opening years of the seventeenth, since the book dealers continued to sell, and the public to buy, those romances which had remained available since their last printings of ten to twenty years before.

The consequences for Cervantes of the continued circulation of the romances of chivalry in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Spain are important ones, for they help lay to rest a commonly-held notion, already attacked by Rodríguez Marín¹⁴⁷, that the romances of chivalry were already dead by the time of the composition of the Quijote¹⁴⁸. Were this the case, of course, Cervantes' repeated declarations that he intended to attack the romances by writing the Quijote could be interpreted as a disguise of his true, perhaps philosophical, intention. Yet the facts do not support this conclusion, since the romances were read right up until 1605¹⁴⁹, and their disappearance was even more remote in the last decades of the sixteenth century, when Cervantes probably began the composition of Part I¹⁵⁰.

It is true, of course, that no new romances, and few reprints, were published after 1602. There is evidence, however, to attack the notion, even more commonly held than the one just referred to, that the Quijote achieved with its publication its declared purpose of completely ending the popularity of the romances of chivalry. Quite aside from Leonard's support for the Guzmán de Alfarache as a more important cause of declining interest in the romances of chivalry (Books of the Brave, p. 264), we should avoid the conclusion that if no more romances were published after 1602 or 1605 -for which reason, obviously, few copies could be shipped to the New World (Leonard, Books of the Brave, p. 286)- they were discarded and quickly forgotten. The reprinting of the Espejo de princípes in 1617-23, the use made of the romances as subject for various plays written after 1605 (Thomas, pp. 78-79, 116-17, 126), the ownership of copies of the romances by individuals¹⁵¹, the appearance of the heroes of romances in masks after the Quijote show that «Cervantes' recent burlesquing of the fantastic adventures of these fictional supermen had not yet destroyed their vogue»¹⁵². When Lope praises the romances in 1620 (Thomas, p. 154), and Gracián inveighs against them in the Criticón¹⁵³, the composition and publication of the Quijote may have been more a symbol of the romances' gradual decline than a major cause of it. The simultaneous appearance of Don Quijote and the heroes of romances in masks¹⁵⁴ suggests that Don Quijote was seen not as an answer to the romances, but as a new type, an «Amadís a lo ridículo» as Nicolás Antonio called him¹⁵⁵, a continuation rather than an antithesis.

A useful parallel can be drawn with the Western movie of the United States, also an art form of escapist intent, whose connection with the past on which it claims to be based can at times be very loose indeed. The Western was one of the earliest types of motion picture, which reached its greatest heights during the first half century after the beginning of motion pictures. At the present moment it can safely be said to be moribund: few directors with artistic pretentions would wish to make a Western, and they are not paid much attention by current film critics or the discerning public (the «intelligentsia» of film-goers). The genre has been so exploited and become so hackneyed that parodic Westerns, such as Cat Ballou, can be made. Yet it would be a serious mistake to consider the Western film dead. Some films continue to be made, a body of fans exists who view when possible the older films, and American Westerns, like the Spanish romances, are very popular in many foreign countries, so much so that there are now «Western» film industries in several countries, particularly Italy and Japan. Perhaps most significant is the undisputed fact that even those who are bored with and contemptuous of Westerns, and would never see one, know what they are, and have a general acquaintance with the main works and the stock situations of the genre.

When, then, did the Spanish romance of chivalry die? The answer to this question must be that it did not die suddenly, on any specific day or within any specific year or even decade. Like an aged person, it lingered on, gradually failing for years, well into the seventeenth century, before it could be said to be completely dead. It is more a case of it fading away, losing gradually the interest of larger proportions of the public¹⁵⁶, being restricted to ever smaller circles of active readers. Julio Caro Baroja even suggests that it never died completely, that there remained some readers, a continually smaller and less cultured group, practically up to the beginnings of modern scholarship and the first modern edition of the Amadís, in the nineteenth century¹⁵⁷. Whether this is the case or not I have not the data to determine, but from the nineteenth century onward those romances which were available have been read fairly widely, culminating in the current interest in the romances by modern novelists¹⁵⁸. Certainly the present revival has not run its course, and we will see further editions and influence of the romances in this, the twentieth century.

Previous books on romances of chivalry, such as that of Henry Thomas, have tended to talk about the externals of the romances -their popularity, their publication-, rather than give the readers a complete picture of what a romance of chivalry was. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the complicated plots of the romances are inevitably confusing and hard to Summarize, and those writers who do include such summaries often abandon them after a few pages, feeling that they are surely boring their readers and perhaps boring themselves as well¹⁵⁹.

To avoid this pitfall and yet give the reader of this volume a taste of what a romance of chivalry was like, this chapter offers a composite summary of the action of a romance of chivalry, made up of the elements commonly found in them. What follows, therefore, is not a description of any one romance, but is true in spirit to all of them. I have offered in footnotes a series of selections from various romances which illustrate the points being discussed. It is hoped, therefore, that the modern reader who does not choose to read a romance in its entirety, or who gets no further than Amadís de Gaula, which is in some ways atypical¹⁶⁰, will understand something of the world in which the knight-errant moved, and perhaps some of the appeal of these early works of fiction.

The romance of chivalry is always set in the past, even far in the past, though never before the birth of Christ. As is well known because of Cervantes' imitation of this feature in the Quijote, the romances are surrounded by trappings intended to give them an air of pseudo-historicity. (See «The Pseudo-Historicity of the Romances of Chivalry», included in this volume). They always pretend to be true «crónicas» or «historias». The manuscript of a romance may have been found in some remote place; it will have been written in some strange language -«strange» being, in this case, non-Romance; it has been translated into Spanish with effort. There is usually an «author» or «chronicler» with in the story, who may be a semi-official historian, setting down the deeds of his famous contemporary; he may be a sabio who takes an active part in the events he relates, helping the protagonist at crucial moments¹⁶¹.

Following classical and medieval precedent, the protagonist of a romance of chivalry is always male and invariably of royal blood -a prince. His lineage is usually specified. Through some mishap he is separated from his parents and his homeland when still a baby; he may be stolen away by evildoers, or carried off by a boat, or simply be abandoned by his mother because of the circumstances surrounding his birth, which often was illegitimate¹⁶². He grows up in the court of another king, far away, though he may have been sheltered at first by farmers or other such humble people¹⁶³. Usually there will remain with him some clue, either a mark on his body¹⁶⁴, or some artifact which accompanies him (such as Palmerín de Olivia's cross¹⁶⁵), to eventually provide the «proof» of his true identity when the anagnorisis arrives. He will eventually learn his true identity and be reunited with his parents and family, either at the midpoint or near the end of the book¹⁶⁶.

The protagonist shows signs from a very early age of his royal blood and the corresponding great abilities which were thought of as the natural endowments of a great ruler. He is exceptionally handsome¹⁶⁷, so much so that he captivates and gains the affection of all who see him, save those of evil nature. He may walk or talk at a younger age than normal. Being fearless, like mythological infants such as Hercules, he may perform extraordinary feats as a baby or young boy. Lions, symbols of royalty, instinctively respect him. He is exceptionally strong and vigorous, possessed of excellent health, never ill unless wounded. He can easily defeat a boy of the same age, who will more than likely be physically smaller, since the protagonists of the romances of chivalry are swarthy individuals, taller and huskier than the persons they come in contact with (see the text quoted in note 167). As stated above, the prince and king-to-be, in short, conforms very closely to the image of the ideal medieval ruler.

While still at the court in which he has grown up he will receive instruction from tutors, such as a Spanish prince would; his attitude toward his studies will be respectful, not rebellious. He will learn what is taught him, which often includes a variety of languages¹⁶⁸, later to serve him in good stead, but his inclination is obviously not to books nor to the world of learning. His studies do not continue past his youth.

After the prince has learned to ride and to fight with the sword and other arms, also at an early age, he will desire to leave the court where he has grown up and go in search of adventures; Rosicler, for example, simply «queria ir por el mundo a saber algunas cosas de las que avia en él» (Espejo de príncipes, I, 27). The protagonist has Wanderlust. There is always opposition to this desire of his, some attempt made to convince or force him not to leave -scarcely surprising considering that he is so young¹⁶⁹. He may have to depart secretly (an action that Don Quijote was to imitate)¹⁷⁰. By this time he will have been or will seek to be dubbed a knight, by the person of highest status he can manage to find and convince to do so -a king or an emperor is ideal¹⁷¹-, and will have received as gifts his first set of arms and armor, his shield white as befits a new or novel knight¹⁷². Later, after some especially noteworthy or significant adventure, he will take as a heraldic symbol an animal, natural phenomenon, flower, or some similar item, such as are found in any inventory of coats of arms, which in their origin were based on just such a practice.

Once he has left the court where he has grown up, the knight-errant (for such he now is) will travel extensively. His travels will be both through familiar and unfamiliar parts of the world: Europe, Asia, sometimes North Africa, sometimes to imaginary places made up by the author. (The New World, of course, had not yet been discovered). He may visit London, Paris, or Constantinople, cities already with some chivalric tradition, but never Rome, Jerusalem, nor a Spanish city such as Toledo or Santiago. The travels of the knight offered the author of the romance an opportunity to entertain his readers, always eager for discussions of new and marvellous places, and display whatever geographic knowledge he might have, and his powers of imagination.

The knight will primarily travel by land, on horse or occasionally on foot, but he may well have occasion to journey by sea or by means of some supernatural means of transportation. His travels may be for various purposes: to see, serve, elope with, or retire from his lady, to attend a tournament announced in some more or less distant city, to go to the aid of kings or queens in need of military assistance to repel invaders or to claim what is rightfully theirs, to obtain a healing agent for someone ill, to help free someone held captive, to catch a glimpse of some beautiful woman, to get to know the identity of or to find his parents¹⁷³. There may be no more significant reason than the fact that someone he encounters has requested his company.

The knight never seeks money; indeed, money is so seldom mentioned, as Don Quijote correctly points out to Sancho, that it seems that the protagonists of the romances live in a primitive era, outside the money economy altogether. The only times we find money mentioned at all is in terms of a prize or reward (more often a valuable object), or as a tribute or tax demanded by an evil ruler (as, for example, in Cirongilio de Tracia, III, 10). The knight expects and receives hospitality from those he meets along his way; similar to the modern Indian holy man, it was considered both a duty and an honor to provide for someone as valuable to society as the knight. His physical needs, modest in any event, are thus easily met.

To the extent that the knight seeks anything, he seeks prestige, fame, and reputation, and his adventures are a means of obtaining these. However, besides his extraordinary deeds, he also attains fame and reputation because of the qualities of his personality -the gracious way the knight treats others, for example, magnanimously setting free the enemies he has vanquished. Although he will never boast of or even recite his feats -for that would be a symptom of pride-, and may often disguise his identity, using, for example, borrowed armor with a different heraldic symbol, the news traveled fast in the chivalric world, and the knight-errant rapidly became well known and sought after. He is, in effect, proving that he is of royal abilities, and a fit ruler for the kingdom or empire which he will in the course of time inherit.

Part of the knight's reputation, as we have just indicated, is based on something besides his ability as a fighter. He will, in fact, have a great many desirable qualities: intelligence, a calm temper, magnanimity. His mesura and cool temper were important virtues, for one with a hot temper too easily gets into unnecessary fights. The knight has a highly developed ethical sense, and always helps the more deserving of two parties to a conflict; in fact, he feels he has a responsibility to help those deserving persons in need of his help, of which there are many. The knight does not seek occasions for serious fighting, though he does for the less serious fighting which was intended as entertainment. He avoids conflict whenever possible, and only engages in it when reconciliation with his opponent is impossible, when the adversary cannot be made to see the inevitable error of his ways.

He will be a good courtier, even though court life is not to his taste¹⁷⁴. He is neither wordy nor taciturn, and may be able to play musical instruments and compose verses. He may have a good sense of humor and sometimes enjoy verbal repartée.

With all these desirable qualities and abilities, it is scarcely surprising that the knight is widely liked and respected. Nevertheless, there are evil persons in the world, «traidores» and «malvados», and thus he will have enemies. They may be simply jealous of him, jealousy being both a sin and a flaw in one's personality, or they may seek revenge for some defeat they have received at his hand¹⁷⁵.

Not infrequently he may gain an enemy as a consequence of an interest in, or from, a female. Such enemies may invent falsehoods about the knight, accusing him of treason which he would never dream of committing. He may be accused of love for an inappropriate person, such as a (married) queen¹⁷⁶. Or the accusations may be less serious. Usually the ultimate fate of the knight's evil accusers is death, either because a battle is required to show, through combat, which party is telling the truth and to cleanse the knight's honor and reputation, or because the malcreants are put to death by the king when exposed, or because they cannot bear living in humiliation, which in the chivalric world, again reflecting contemporary Spanish values, was felt to be intolerable. The knight-errant and protagonist will not, however, seek the death of his enemies.

Among the evil characters the knight will come into contact with on his travels are giants. As I have explained elsewhere¹⁷⁷, the giants were not supernatural beings but merely very large and ugly men, who believed themselves to be superior to ordinary men and therefore free from the troubling need to follow society's rules. Giants are clearly the villains of the romances of chivalry. Never Christians¹⁷⁸, they usurped kingdoms because of their whim, and carried off women with the intent of raping them and men to be sold as slaves. (One may well note here a reflection of the Spaniards' attitude toward the Moors). The giants are haughty and disrespectful. They offer the knight the chance to show his extraordinary abilities in defeating and killing them; in the case of giants, he does not hesitate to put them to death. Occasionally one finds a good or reformed giant¹⁷⁹, and sometimes dwarfs¹⁸⁰, evil or otherwise.

Several other characteristics of the knight in the romances of chivalry need mentioning. Because he is such a likeable person and a good companion, the knight is seldom alone. This is not because he has a squire, since the role of squires in the Spanish romances of chivalry, as Don Quijote knew, is a very secondary one. It is rather because friends of similar age, or relatives, accompany him on his travels. Often he travels with knights that he meets by chance on the road.

The knight is also an outdoorsman. He is not upset by the discomforts of travel in those primitive times, and frankly enjoys the nature by which he is usually surrounded. He goes through beautiful forests, climbs gentle hills, comes across fresh, clear rivers¹⁸¹, is woken in the morning by the singing of the birds, and makes his meals when necessary from what nature provides. His main diversion, aside from tournaments or an occasional sarao with the ladies, is caza de monte.

Correspondingly, the knight does not like urban life. Cities, as well as creature comforts, make him uneasy and restless. To visit a castle, palace, or court (the latter usually set in a city) may be attractive for a time, but once the tournament is over or his business concluded, the knight feels he must be on the road again, an attitude clearly reflected by Don Quijote in II, 57 and 58 of the Quijote. The knight may even be surmised to have a certain scorn for those who do not share this view. One of the saddest moments in the life of a knight-errant (or in the life of a king, perhaps the protagonist's father, a former knight-errant) is when he finally accedes to his throne. Then he can no longer be «errant», for custom and good sense require that the king remain more or less in one spot, chained by his duty, and unable to travel as a younger person is free to do.

While the knight feels comfortable in small groups and is glad to have company, he dislikes large gatherings of people. In a military action, conscious of his status, he will not mix with the common soldiers, though he will quite routinely accept a meal from shepherds if he encounters them on his travels. The tournament is the only exception to this, since tournaments are a basic element of the Spanish romances of chivalry, and they bring together a large body of knights.

It may safely be concluded that the tournaments are as frequent as they are because the Spanish readers found them entertaining, strange as this may seem to the modern reader who has lost the taste for this type of sport. A tournament would be given by a king, who himself gained status by staging one and by having distinguished knights in his court, even for a short time; the king also would enjoy recapturing some of the pleasure of the company of other knights, which he cannot enjoy as frequently as in his youth.

A tournament usually had some prize or prizes to be awarded, some attraction which would draw knights. They came not so much for the prize to be awarded (since the winner, our protagonist, would invariably give it away in his turn, often to a woman present at the tournament whom he wished to impress). The knight entered the competition for the honor of winning the prize, the status gained thereby, and the social obligations he created with his gift. The most common sport at the tournaments was the fight with lances, long, thick poles with which two knights at a time ran at each other, on horseback, each attempting with the blow of the impact to knock the other from his horse. The force of the impact was considerable, and often the thick lances would break; the two knights would continue using additional lances until one was victorious¹⁸². Although physical injury was not the object in this sport, which was often a game among friends, it was not uncommon for someone to be hurt.

A sort of impromptu tournament, semi-serious, which the knight might encounter was the paso, in which someone would block the road, or a bridge, and the knight could not continue his travel unless he admitted something unacceptable (that his lady was less beautiful than another, for example)¹⁸³, or defeated in battle the knight maintaining the paso. That this type of adventure antedated the Spanish romances, and is found in the fifteenth-century Passo honroso -itself a reflection of literature¹⁸⁴-, is so well known as almost to make it unnecessary to mention it here.

Along with tournaments and pasos, battles are also an essential part of the romances of chivalry, and here again the knight-errant is able to show his exceptional abilities. Always held for a serious and just reason -to repel an attack, for example- the battles are invariably bloody affairs in which many are killed¹⁸⁵, unless, as occasionally happens, the two sides to a conflict decide to have a limited number from each side determine, through fighting, the outcome¹⁸⁶. The protagonist is usually not a main participant at the beginning of a battle, since he remains calm and somewhat detached, and the duty of fighting would first be assumed by the person(s) the knight is aiding. But when the knight-errant, the hero of the story, has his anger aroused, he becomes a terrifying opponent. He wields his sword and charges through the battle, cutting off heads and arms, penetrating armor with the force of his blows. Not unusual is the blow which descends through the helmet, the neck, and part of the trunk, severing an opponent almost into two parts. There is often a religious element to these battles, in which the knight, though not necessarily a Christian, helps the Christian side, which will in any event be more deserving for other reasons. The knight not born a Christian will at some point be converted to the «true» religion.

Women and love usually play a secondary role in the Spanish romances of chivalry, serving more as background, or providing motives for action¹⁸⁷, than taking part in the action themselves. Ladies did not travel for pleasure or amusement; in fact, except for women in search of assistance or carrying out some vow, they did not travel at all unless forced to by evil-doers. We can summarize by saying that both literally and figuratively, women are the spectators at the tournament. Love, of course, was seen as a refining element, felt to improve men, and the knight will fall in love at some point with the woman he will eventually marry, though not much significance was given to the marriage vows, to judge from the number of children conceived out of wedlock. But love was still a pretext for adventures, rather than a main focus of attention. The knight's courtship of his lady, consequently, will usually be secret, and beset with external difficulties, even if the lady is agreeable, which is not always the case, especially at the beginning¹⁸⁸. The romance will usually end with the marriage of the knight (perhaps a joint marriage, together with some of his friends or relatives), the birth or conception of a son, and the protagonist's accession to the throne¹⁸⁹.

Women in need of assistance, ranging from queens to humble servant girls, are the basis for many of the knight's deeds¹⁹⁰. A woman whose honor had been attacked could only cleanse it through battle with her accuser or dishonorer, and had to seek a knight to take her part and defend her (a practice reflected in the episode of Doña Rodríguez, in the Quijote). The protagonist will not resist the request to help such a deserving person¹⁹¹.

Adventures with the supernatural will also present themselves to the knight, though not in the sense the Quijote has given us to understand. He will not be pursued by enchanters; more often he will have sabios with some magical powers -those consistent with Christianity, usually- who will be working to help him, and may determine the course of the plot¹⁹². (Thus the knight, like Don Quijote in the Cueva de Montesinos, may find that adventures have been «reserved» for him¹⁹³). But the knight will still have to combat with unnatural beasts of all sorts¹⁹⁴, penetrate obstacles created by magic in order to reach some protected place, fight and find the inevitable weak point of a combatant with magical gifts, or travel in a boat, carriage, or other conveyance sent and moved by magical means. He may be misled by apparitions, or be held enchanted in a castle or island for a period of time¹⁹⁵.

So far we have been discussing the ways in which the romances of chivalry are similar, and they can seem surprisingly similar and even monotonous to the casual reader. But this is merely a reflection of the fact that the customs of another age, seen from the perspective of some five hundred years, will seem uniform and will not reveal their nuances and details until one is familiar with the broad generalities. One would scarcely expect the readers of the romances to purchase and read numerous works if these were all seen by them to be identical. The differences were what made the romances, as a genre, possible.

The countries in which the romances were set varied considerably, and in fact no two, save different members of the same «family», were set in exactly the same locale. The travels that the knight undertook were thus similarly varied -he might travel to China, at one end of the world, or to England, at the other. The romance may have numerous subplots, with many simultaneous stories and many secondary characters, sometimes taking center stage for a period of time. However, this is a difference of degree, for even those romances concentrating more specifically on one protagonist had, by modern standards, an extremely confusing number of characters. The types of adventures encountered by the knight, the problems he is beset with, the ways in which he is tested, the various and diverse fantastic beasts or magical apparitions, the military situations, all could provide for variety within the standard framework of the romance. Even the various and seemingly endless and uniform tournaments actually have subtle differences within them to maintain the readers' interest, just as each soccer game, for example, is different, though to one who has not seen many games and does not understand the strategy, they will all be alike.

Within the limitations provided by the ideal of knighthood (and by implication, manhood) to which the knights of the romances must conform, the various protagonists of the romances of chivalry are in fact diverse individuals. One may be more interested in love than another; one a more constant lover than other. One knight may have a particularly fierce temper, and though a calm, even excessively calm, individual normally, particularly fierce temper, and though a calm, even excessively calm, individual normally, become a particularly terrifying warrior when he is aroused. Though all the protagonists of the novels are exceptional fighters, their interests in music, poetry, and travel, to cite a few examples, may vary. A knight may have an overriding purpose or goal which stays with him and underlies his varied actions through much of the romance -finding the secret of his ancestry, for example- or such a general purpose may be lacking, and his motivations be more specific and of more limited duration.

We see also in the romances attempts by the authors to impress and divert the reader through creation of specific set pieces, often with reference to well-known Classical events. The author may state that his readers are about to see a new battle of Troy, fought over a woman more beautiful than Helen. A knight may even, as does the Caballero del Febo (Espejo de princípes, II, 55), pass through the scene of the original battle of Troy, and find there descendants of the participants in that conflict. A series of chapters may be centered around a particularly marvelous castle, with transparent walls, extremely elaborate and rich decoration, and superlative inhabitants¹⁹⁶.

Several times in this chapter I have referred to the Spanish nature of the romances, and it is worth referring to it once again in conclusion. The world presented in the Spanish romances of chivalry is an idealized version of Spain itself, not so foreign as to be truly surprising, just enough so as to be entertaining. The values are Spanish, and all characters save clearly identifiable outsiders share them. The value system is more specifically that of the Spanish nobility at the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of the Renaissance; the only difference is that the characters endorse these values so firmly, just as they themselves are obviously idealized individuals-ones that the readers, perhaps, would like to identify with.

The romances of chivalry, then, presented to their Spanish audience a world which was familiar in its basic values even though different in details. For this reason it was a reassuring world, one free of the moral and political confusion characteristic of early modern Spain (and of most other times as well). Black is black and white is white in the romances of chivalry, heroes and villains are clearly distinguished; women are either virtuous or common, beautiful or ugly. The books, while entertaining to the spirit, were relaxing to the intellect, as one would expect from a type of literature which was essentially escape or pleasure reading. One should not be surprised that the romances were as popular as they in fact were.

Our point of departure in this chapter is the imbalance in Spanish literary history, from the eighteenth century to the present, between the treatment of Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, editor of most of Amadís de Gaula, author of the remainder and of its continuation, the Sergas de Esplandián, and Feliciano de Silva, favorite author of Don Quijote and the author of many romances of chivalry, of whose works the most representative and perhaps the best is Amadís de Grecia, Book 9 of the Amadís series¹⁹⁷. While Montalvo's works have been edited and studied in depth for over a century, the works of Silva, with the partial exception of his Segunda Celestina¹⁹⁸, have not been reprinted since the sixteenth century, and have been studied incompletely by a small handful of specialists¹⁹⁹.

The modern scorn for the works of Silva is surely derived from the negative comments of Cervantes' humor-loving priest, who enthusiastically dispatches all the chivalric works of Silva, along with the Sergas de Esplandián, to the bonfire in the escrutinio de la librería²⁰⁰, and from the attack in the first chapter of the Quijote on Silva's «entricadas razones», including the famous quotation «la razón de la sinrazón...», the only sentence from Silva's works to be generally known today²⁰¹. Scholars have generally felt it superfluous to look at Silva's works for themselves after these comments from such an authority as Cervantes himself. Menéndez y Pelayo's comments on the dramatic decline in quality of the romances after Amadís de Gaula, and the «taller de novelas» which Silva allegedly set up, have already been quoted (p. 21). Even such a well-informed critic as Henry Thomas, however, states that «this [Esplandián] and the succeeding continuations of Amadís are for the most part but poor exaggerations of their original» (p. 67). John O'Connor, author of the only monograph on the entire Amadís cycle, can only complain about the «extravagant length» of the books²⁰².

We can contrast this imbalance with the attitude towards Silva in Golden Age Spain, in which a scholar like López Pinciano excepted Amadís de Grecia from the general condemnation of romances of chivalry (above). Silva was thought of by some as a writer of the same stature as Antonio de Guevara²⁰³, and he was a friend of Jorge de Montemayor, who dedicated to him an epitaph and an elegy²⁰⁴. We can also gain information about the esteem in which the works of Silva were held by looking at the printing history of his works. Although Amadís de Gaula was the single most popular romance, the various chivalric works of Silva together had more editions, and therefore more circulation. Lisuarte de Grecia went through ten editions, and the longer Amadís de Grecia seven. Montalvo's own work, the Sergas de Esplandián, was not more popular, and went without an edition for almost forty years (1549-1587). Irving Leonard, from his study of ship inventories, comments on the distinct popularity of Silva's Florisel de Niquea, during some part of the century the most popular romance²⁰⁵.

All of this suggests that the modern imbalance in the popularity of Silva's and Montalvo's works did not exist in the sixteenth century, nor even later, to judge from the adaptations made of Silva's works²⁰⁶, and from the fact that, like Homer or Ovid, he was such a famous author as to have attributed to him works that were not his²⁰⁷. There are a number of factors one can point to in order to explain why this was so. Montalvo, about whom we know very little²⁰⁸, was a man of the fifteenth century, and he was working with a text, the Amadís, which was even older. The Amadís was a text of relatively unsophisticated structure²⁰⁹ and a simple style, with a sentimentalism more typical of medieval works of French inspiration, or of some cancionero poetry, than of the Spanish renaissance, prior to the pastoral novel and the advent of neo-Platonism.

Montalvo was also an author of limited output. Though his statement in the prologue to Amadís that he had «corr[egido] estos tres libros de Amadís» could have been taken as merely another formula to disguise his authorship, that Montalvo was not the work's author was apparently widely known in sixteenth-century Spain²¹⁰. Modern scholarship has questioned even his composition of Book IV of the Amadís and of the Sergas de Esplandián²¹¹. Furthermore, Montalvo was a writer of a distinctly moralist outlook. He wanted to «clean up» the Amadís, eliminating sensual passages, and he wanted to create in Esplandián a knight not stronger, but more virtuous than his father. Montalvo criticized the characters of his source, such as Oriana, and tried to de-emphasize the role of personal combat²¹².

In contrast with Montalvo, Silva was a voluminous writer, the only author of romances of chivalry to achieve renown from his fiction. The fact that he was a moderately well-known writer in his own day, so much so as to offer a target for parody²¹³, has led in part to the conservation of considerable biographical material. His will, documents concerning the limpieza de sangre of a descendant, the verse Sueño dedicated to him by «un su cierto servidor», and various comments by his literary friends and enemies, supplement the information taken from his works, and allow a fairly complete picture to be drawn.

Whereas the information we, and presumably the sixteenth century as well, have about Montalvo is limited to the fact presented at the beginning of the Amadís, that he was «regidor de Medina del Campo», we know that Silva was of a noble family of Ciudad Rodrigo, of which he succeeded his father to the office of Regidor²¹⁴. (Ciudad Rodrigo was also the home of the author of Palmerín de Olivia and Primaleón²¹⁵, with whom Silva may have had contact). His father bore the chivalric name of Tristán de Silva, which surely explains the unusual name Feliciano (Tristán-Feliciano). Feliciano studied in Salamanca, and acquired at an early age literary tastes which were to remain with him: his friend Núñez de Reinoso, whose work shows great influence of Silva²¹⁶, has him «leyendo de contino en Ciceron / y to mas primo de lenguas floridas», in a verse epistle directed to him (Rose, p. 295; Cravens, p. 29, n. 28; it is also discussed by Eugenio Asensio in the article cited in note 216). Silva received «criança y mercedes» from the Archbishop of Seville, Diego de Deza²¹⁷, and he served two years under Carlos V, quite possibly fighting on the side of the King during the revolt of the Comunidades²¹⁸. The collector of curiosities Luis Zapata records his strange ability to predict the winners of battles and oposiciones²¹⁹. The love element in his life was an important one, as we shall see shortly, but once married, he led a calm family life. Despite his abundant literary production, Silva was far from wealthy at his death, his printer Portonariis owing him a sizeable quantity of money²²⁰. Nevertheless, he is reported to have been helpful to those in need, though whether this was financially or otherwise is not specified²²¹.

While Montalvo was a conservative, and in some ways a reactionary, Silva was an innovator, and gave the Amadís series new life after it almost ended with the unfavorable reaction to Florisando, Book 6, and the second Lisuarte de Grecia, Book 8²²². He was the first to continue the Celestina, in which he was imitated directly by two others and indirectly by several more; it was he who introduced the pastoral into Spanish prose fiction, in Amadís de Grecia, setting an important precedent for the pastoral novel which would come later²²³.

Silva also attempted to improve the romances of chivalry, and shows a consciousness of his romances as «his» and a strong sense of what is appropriate in these works²²⁴. We see in his chivalric works, and particularly in Amadís de Grecia, a desire to create a literarily sophisticated composition and to cause «admiración» in the reader. The plots of his romances are more complicated than those of his predecessors, with more characters and as a result more narrative threads and subplots, to the point where it is virtually impossible to make an intelligible summary of the plot of any of them²²⁵. But even when the adventures are the same as those found in the works of Montalvo, the difference between the two authors is clear. For example, Montalvo set up a battle between the father Amadís and his son Esplandián, but it is not much developed, takes about a page in the BAE edition (p. 434), and there is a definite victor. In Amadís de Grecia there is also a conflict between Amadís de Grecia and his father Lisuarte de Grecia, but as both were equally irresistible and neither could win, the horrendous battle lasts a long time and is only stopped by Urganda la Desconocida. Urganda, who had been enchanted, is freed in time to stop the battle when Amadís, desperately searching for a weapon to replace his broken one, removes the sword which Urganda had been run through with (reminiscent of Arthur's feat with Excalibur).

In Amadís de Gaula, as is well known, there is found the adventure of the «Arco de los leales amadores», which is a test or «prueba» of love. Those who do not succeed in passing it are tormented by blows, while those faithful lovers who pass «sienten gran deleite», and in the case of Amadís himself, the arch plays music and dispenses flowers. This, however, is but little compared with the adventure of «La gloria de Niquea», in Amadís de Grecia²²⁶. The first knight to attempt it is not just turned back, but is burned to a crisp, «él y su cavallo convertido todo en carbones» (II, 50; fol. clxxii of the edition of 1530). The «gloria» which the successful knight was to receive was the sight of the princess Niquea herself, who was so beautiful that all who saw her died, or lost their minds, for which reason she was shut up in a tower, later surrounded by flames -the «aventura» itself- to protect her from the passion of her brother Anastarax.

There are certainly enchantments in the works of Montalvo, but what such episode can compare with the Castillo del Universo, built by Urganda and Alquife in Amadís de Grecia? In this castle a group of the protagonists is enchanted, to remain there a hundred years. The Castillo del Universo is so named because it contains a working model of the universe, made up of a series of rooms in a tower, one above another, corresponding respectively to the various elements of the Ptolomean universe -the planets, the sun, the stars, with God above them all, who makes the parts of the model move, «haziendo sus influencias naturales en cada parte del universo, segun sus operaciones» (II, 76; fol. 204 of the edition of 1530).

A final point in the comparison of the works of Montalvo and those of Feliciano de Silva is the contrasting treatment of love. As we have said, the love which is a main theme of Amadís de Gaula is a sentimentalized love, similar to that of courtly poetry, in which Oriana «fue hecha dueña... más por la gracia y comedimiento de Oriana que por la desemboltura ni osadía de Amadís» (ed. Place, I, 285). In the works of Silva love is just as present, but it is of a different sort, less idealized and more sensual. Amadís de Grecia is by no means the same faithful lover as is his great-grandfather, Amadís de Gaula. His grandson, Rogel de Grecia, is even more licentious. In the romance which bears Rogel's name, he says to his companion near the beginning: «Dexad en mal punto essas sandezes y lealtades de amor, y tratad pendencia de amores con una de las infantas, y démonos a plazer, en cuanto podamos» (I, fol. 5^r of the edition of 1568).

This change in focus may perhaps be explained by examining the personality of Silva. (Of the love element in Montalvo's life we know nothing). Silva was certainly a person who married for love not unknown in that period, but not so common either -since he married, against the strong opposition of his family, a girl, Gracia Fe, of Jewish descent²²⁷. (Her last name was concealed and is unknown). In an attempt to overcome the opposition, Silva attributed her paternity to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, to whom Amadís de Grecia was dedicated, whose reputation was such that he could not deny that Gracia was his daughter. (Mendoza did not know how many illegitimate children he had)²²⁸.

In the «Sueño de Feliciano de Silva»²²⁹ which is found at the end of Book I of Amadís de Grecia, Silva describes himself as «cansado y quebrantado de mi gloriosa y excelente passion de amores, aunque no harto de padecella, por la causa que más me obliga, y tanto, que muchas vezes del dios de amor me quexo, porque puso tanta gloria adonde avia de faltar con tantos quilates la pena» (fol. 111^v of the edition of 1530). Guided by «aquel buen amador» Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, author of the fifteenth-century Siervo libre del amor, Silva has an interview in this dream with the god of love, who exclaims, when he sees Silva, «este es mi hijo muy amado, con el qual yo mucho me he gozado» (fol. 113^v). When Silva sees his lady there as well, she says: «Yo sé que una de las cosas [causas] porque as sacado tan bien al natural los amores de aquellos preciados cavalleros Lisuarte y Perion²³⁰ y Amadis de Grecia fue por la esperiencia de los que tú por mi causa passas, y sé que tienes gran congoxa por saber de la parte segunda desta grande historia. Y porque yo assi mismo tengo el desseo que tú tienes, para satisfazer al tuyo y al mio y al servicio de aquel que la obra quieres dirigir, ... te hago saber que la hallarás en una cueva que se llama los Palacios de Hercules, metida en una caxa de madera, que no se corrompe, en un lado de la pared; porque quando España fue perdida la escondieron en aquel lugar, porque la memoria destos cavalleros no se perdiesse» (fol. 114^v)²³¹.

These comments clearly suggest a man in whose life love has played an important role, and whose experiences are reflected in his fiction. It is not surprising, then, that Silva differs in two ways from his predecessors in his portrait of love. His portrayal of the courtly lover, the one who suffers from his love for an idealized woman, is more developed than anything found in any earlier Spanish text. At the same time, in different sections of his works, we find a physical element to the love among men and women which had also been missing from the romances of chivalry. (We should not forget that Silva was the author of the Segunda Celestina, much less moralistic than the work of Rojas). If Darinel is a versifying courtly shepherd, Florisel seeks physical rather than spiritual love (Cravens, pp. 58-59). While Urganda la Desconocida, present since Amadís de Gaula, finally marries Alquife, we have a stimulating contrast to her in the figure of Zahara, a lady knight who fights like a man. On the other hand, in a chapter of Amadís de Grecia with the tittilating title of «Cómo Nereyda conosció carnalmente a Niquea», the situation is the reverse: Amadís de Grecia dresses as a girl, Nereyda, and arranges to be sold as a slave. This is the only way he can sleep in the chamber of the beautiful Niquea; the results are predictable. At the same time Niquea's father, seeing the beautiful «girl», falls in love with her and wishes to seduce her, causing further complications for Amadís.

It is difficult to imagine how, within the framework of the Spanish romance, an author could produce works which differed more from the chaste and simple novels of Montalvo. If Silva's works were attractive for all the above reasons to sixteenth-century readers, and the modern literary public has shown that it can appreciate some of the romances of chivalry, could it not, also, recapture some of the pleasure that contemporaries found in the works of Silva? Believing that it can, I have begun an edition of Amadís de Grecia, based on the rediscovery in Germany of the only known copy of the princeps, the missing edition of Cuenca, 1530²³².

The romances of chivalry offer great possibilities of research for the young as well as the mature scholar. In the hopes of stimulating some research in areas where I believe it would be useful, as did Homero Serís²³³, I too am offering a series of «nuevos temas».

We still need to make the bulk of the romances accessible through modern, critical, published editions²³⁴. Lepolemo, o el Caballero de la Cruz, different from the other romances in its North African setting and almost complete lack of supernatural elements, would be an ideal candidate. Part I of Clarián de Landanís would be another, as would be Valerián de Hungría. More accessible editions of both the Spanish and Portuguese texts of Palmerín de Inglaterra are clearly in order.

There are a number of analytical or stylistic studies that could properly be made by scholars with an inclination to this type of investigation. It would be worthwhile to analyze Book 2 of Part I of Clarián, for example, to see if it is possible to confirm or deny the statement in the prologue that the author was, like Fernando de Rojas, continuing a work already begun by another. A comparison of Platir with Florambel de Lucea could determine whether they are by one author, as one might suspect from the dedications²³⁵.

A study of a theme in various romances would be useful -the giant in the Spanish romances of chivalry, the architecture, the flora and fauna of the romances of chivalry. An index of the motifs or themes of the romances of chivalry, a task too large to be carried out comprehensively at present, would be a very useful research tool.

One versed in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century history might well study allusions to contemporary events in the romances. (For example, Gayangos [«Catálogo razonado», p. lxxvii] states that the deeds of Rodrigo de Mendoza, «marqués del Zenete», are to be found in Valerián de Hungría). Is the Greece found so often in the romances of chivalry exclusively the ancient Greece of Homer and Alexander the Great, or does it reflect something of the medieval Greece with which the Catalans, at least, had contact?

Although the translations of the Spanish romances, especially the Amadís, into other languages have been studied for themselves, there has not been sufficient study of the characteristics of the translations compared with the characteristics of the Spanish originals; it would be surprising if these translations were faithful, by twentieth century standards. Such an investigation could perhaps help scholars such as O'Connor, who prefer to work with the translations, and would help us see how France, England, and Germany saw Spain at that time.

Particularly valuable for comparatists would be a study of the interest in the romances of chivalry during the romantic period, when Southey and Rose translated romances into English, when Hispanophiles such as Sir Walter Scott were inspired by them in their portrayal of remote times, when even a poet such as John Keats was influenced by them.²³⁶

A study of the influence of the romances on the learned Spanish epic has yet to be undertaken. Even more important, however, is the fact that by no means have all the chivalric allusions in the Quijote been discovered. It is true that because of the similarity of many of the romances, it is difficult to be sure that a parallel indicates a borrowing, but by the same token, some of the parallels already discovered may be coincidental and it may be for some new scholar to find the true sources. It would be valuable even to go through any one romance, identifying all the potential parallels with the work of Cervantes; with a series of such analyses one would then be in a position to begin a serious study of the chivalric sources of the Quijote.

The romances of chivalry which are the subject of the present discussion are those which were written in Castilian in the sixteenth century²³⁷. The conclusions should also be valid for Tirante el Blanco, Amadís de Gaula, and the Sergas de Esplandián, all of which were probably considered to be sixteenth-century Castilian works by the readers of the period. Specifically excluded are those short French works, of the fifteenth century or earlier, translated into Spanish, such as Oliveros de Castilla, Partinuplés de Bles, or Enrique fi de Oliva; they are quite different works, and to a degree were translated and published for a different public. (They are scarcely mentioned in the Quijote). In any event, they do not form part of Spanish literature²³⁸.

The accepted opinion concerning the Spanish romances of chivalry during their heyday, the sixteenth century, is that they were works which were read by all classes of society, from the highest to the lowest, but with a considerable predominance of the more numerous lower classes. Thus, we find Rodríguez Marín making a distinction between the readers of the fifteenth and those of the sixteenth centuries: in the fifteenth century, the works were read by the nobility, but in the sixteenth century «cuantos y cuantas supieron leer perecíanse por el dañoso pasto de los libros de caballerías», inasmuch as «siempre lo que habla a la fantasía se llevó de calle a las gentes»²³⁹. For Salvador de Madariaga, the romances of chivalry were the melodrama of the time, «género, como es sabido, favorito del pueblo. Porque el pueblo, a quien no se le da un bledo la construcción estética ni la consecuencia, cuyas ideas sobre la verosimilitud se apartan sabiamente de las exigencias de nuestra científica edad, y cuyo instinto se pone siempre de parte de la juventud y del amor, el pueblo busca ante todo en la literatura una distracción a la monotonía de su vida»²⁴⁰. «Los campesinos leían los libros de caballerías», baldly affirms Aubrey Bell²⁴¹.

The immediate sources of these observations need not concern us here. Their ultimate source is undoubtedly the Quijote, since in it the romances of chivalry are discussed in more detail than in any other contemporary work. Don Quijote himself says that the romances «con gusto general son leídos y celebrados de los grandes y de los chicos, de los pobres y de los ricos, de los letrados e ignorantes, de los plebeyos y caballeros, finalmente, de todo género de personas de cualquier estado y condición que sean» (I, 50). Cervantes' unnamed friend of the Prologue to Part I is more specific: «Esta vuestra escritura no mira a más que a deshacer la autoridad y cabida que en el mundo y en el vulgo tienen los libros de caballerías». The canon from Toledo concurs in naming the vulgo as the most important group of readers: «Yo he tenido cierta tentación de hacer un libro de caballerías... [pero] no quiero sujetarme al confuso juicio del desvanecido vulgo, a quien por la mayor parte toca leer semejantes libros» (I, 48).

These passages are important, and we will return to them, but they should not be accepted uncritically as the final word on the subject. There is, in fact, a considerable quantity of other data which bears on the problem. We may begin by noting that although many moralist writers of the period criticized the romances of chivalry, with varying degrees of justification, we will look in vain among their comments for any indication that the books affected members of the lower classes²⁴². There is evidence to the contrary, in that several critics (and the unsuccessful petition of 1555, requesting the prohibition of the romances) speak of the uselessness of guarding a daughter when she has the Amadís to read, or of the time which boys waste in reading the romances which they could better spend studying more useful books²⁴³.

This note on the youthfulness of readers corresponds with the familiar names of several nobles who «wasted time» with them when young (Juan de Valdés, the future saints Íñigo de Loyola and Teresa de Cepeda), and many of the books were dedicated to young patrons²⁴⁴. Other nobles, however, remained interested in them as adults²⁴⁵ -notably Carlos V and many of his court, which set a model for the country by its interest in romances of chivalry and in chivalric spectacle²⁴⁶. When we examine the dedications of the romances, we find they are dedicated not just to nobles, but to the very highest nobility of sixteenth-century Spain -Diego Hurtado and Íñigo López de Mendoza, Dukes of the Infantado, Pero Álvarez Osorio, Marquis of Astorga and count of Trastamara, Juan de la Cerda, Duke of Medinaceli, and many others, including various members of Carlos V's court (see Appendix). Some of these dedications are perfunctory and formal, in that they are an appeal on the part of the author to someone he knew slightly or not at all²⁴⁷, but it should be remembered that a dedication was more meaningful in the sixteenth than in the seventeenth century, on which our image of them is based²⁴⁸, and moreover, some of the dedications, such as those to Palmerín de Olivia and the Espejo de príncipes, have a familiar air about them, suggesting that the author knew the person to whom the work was dedicated and had reason to expect that he would like it. (Were this not a factor, one would expect the books to be dedicated to older patrons, who might be more pleased by the flattery and in any event in a better position to reward the author). There are a significant number of cases (again, see Appendix) in which an author dedicated successive books to the same person, or in which one romance was dedicated to a husband, and later a different one to his wife²⁴⁹, or to a father and then to his son. Still other romances, as can be seen from the dedications, were written by members of the same household, and there is no doubt that in certain cases the publication of the work was subsidized by the mecenas involved.

It is still true, of course, that the receiver of a dedication might not be pleased by a book, but we can nevertheless safely assume that he would not have felt the dedication to be an insult; works printed expressly for popular consumption, such as the pliegos sueltos and the libros de cordel, had no dedications at all.

The books themselves, as physical objects, offer us considerable information. They are, almost without exception, folio volumes; the exceptions are themselves significant, since they were printed out side of Spain²⁵⁰. The editions were small. The printing, except for a few reprints of the final quarter of the century, ranges from good to excellent in quality²⁵¹; some of the editions are illustrated with woodcuts. Their purchasers had them bound in bindings of high quality²⁵².

Some documents provide us with concrete evidence that these books commanded a high price. An important source for the early part of the century is the well-known catalogue of the library of Fernando Colon, reproduced in facsimile by Archer Huntington in 1905²⁵³. This partial listing of the contents of his library includes for each entry the price paid, as well as the place and date of purchase, information invaluable for a study of contemporary book distribution. He evidently purchased as many romances of chivalry as he could obtain; the prices he paid for them are as follows:

Item Number		(1 real =34 maravedíes)
4000	Lisuarte de Grecia (Amadís, Book 7) (1514 edition)	130 maravedíes
4076	Arderique	95 maravedíes254
2708	Floriseo	128 maravedíes
4118	Leoneo de Hungría «encuadernado en pergamino»	170 maravedíes
4069	Lepolemo (1521 edition)	95 maravedíes
3976	Tirante el Blanco	260 maravedíes255
3331 & 3332	Sergas de Esplandián (1510 edition) and Florisando (Amadís, Book 6; 1510 edition)	13 reales (together)
4120	Clarián de Landanís. Part II (1522 edition)	6 1/2 reales
4119	Clarián de Landanís. Part III, «encuadernado en pergamino»	7 reales
4124	Palmerín de Olivia (1516 edition)	4 reales
4125	Primaleón (1524 edition)	5 reales

In comparison, Colón purchased his copy of the Visión deleitable (item 2076) for 36 maravedíes, the Corbacho (item 4024) for 40 maravedíes, and the lengthy Propaladia (item 4032) for only 75 maravedíes. The romances of chivalry are clearly the most expensive Spanish literary works in his library.

We also find evidence of these high prices later in the sixteenth century. In the 1529 inventory of the possessions of Jacob Cromberger²⁵⁶, in the inventory of the books of Juan de Timoneda made at his death in 1583²⁵⁷, and in registers of book shipments reproduced by José Torre Revello²⁵⁸, we find that the romances consistently commanded a high relative price (irrespective of the inflation which affected Spanish money in the period)²⁵⁹.

Upon examining the printing history of the genre, we can also draw some conclusions. The number of romances of chivalry is itself revealing. Although the romances began as a genre, like the pastoral novel, with some works which were great commercial successes, and there were several later works which were frequently reprinted, there is an extensive list of works published which were reprinted only once or not at all, indicating a modest sale. Some of these publications, as stated above, were subsidized; but the majority were treated by their publishers like any other work. Surely it was not the case that publishers brought out, year after year, expensive books which would fail commercially. The figures seem to point instead to a small but consistent demand, which these publications filled, on the part of a limited group of aficionados with the means to indulge this expensive taste²⁶⁰.

It is also revealing to look at the dates of the reprints of the popular works, which are more closely tied to public favor than is the production of new works²⁶¹. After the abdication of Carlos V, which marks a cut-off point for the writing of new romances²⁶², we find that reprints were not produced uniformly throughout the conclusion of the century (as was the case with pliegos sueltos²⁶³ and other popular literature), but instead appeared in groups. We find between 1556 and 1562 not a single reprint, but in 1562 we find printings of Palmerín, of Lepolemo, and of the Espejo de príncipes, in 1563 of Primaleón, of Amadís, and two of Lepolemo (with the publication of its Second Part), and in 1564 of Belianís, Lisuarte de Grecia, and Amadís de Grecia, with the publication of Olivante de Laura. The production then abruptly drops off again, with a lone reprint of the Amadís in 1565, and aside from minor exceptions²⁶⁴ there are no further reprints until 1579. In this latter year we find both parts of Belianís printed, and the Espejo de príncipes; in the following year two editions of the Amadís, one each of Belianís and Palmerín, and the publishing and reprinting of Part II of the Espejo de príncipes, as well as a reprint of the first part. After editions of Amadís de Grecia in 1582 and two, of Florisel in 1584, the last great surge of publishing of romances of chivalry gets underway, with three reprints in 1585, five in 1586, and eight in 1587, including the publication of Part III of the Espejo de príncipes and the first edition in 45 years of the Sergas de Esplandián²⁶⁵. But once again the commercial interest in the romances disappears abruptly, with only a possible, reprint of Florisel in 1588, reprints of the Espejo de príncipes in 1589, and the mysterious and probably non-existant edition of Lidamarte de Armenia in 1590. Except for the anomalies mentioned in n. 238 above, this completes the Castilian printing history of the romances of chivalry.

In the truly popular genres, as just mentioned, we find a much more constant production. Moreover, the dates of the fluctuations, which parallel, though imprecisely, the changes in popularity of the epic poem²⁶⁶, themselves suggest an upper-class audience. The first «low point», from 1556-1561, can be explained as caused by the upheaval surrounding Carlos V's abdication and death, and the adjustments needed by the installation of a new king. The second lacuna, from approximately 1567-1579, corresponds well to the military activities directed by Don Juan de Austria -first the morisco rebellion, then the naval activities in the Mediterranean, in which he was accompanied by a significant portion of the Spanish nobility²⁶⁷. That the final rise and decline were situated around the year of 1588 cannot be a coincidence, for whatever the effect of the Armada's defeat on Spain's naval power, there can be no doubt that the expedition aroused interest in chivalric matters, and that in its defeat was lost a considerable sector of the cream of the nobility²⁶⁸.

Taking all the factors mentioned into consideration, is it reasonable to conclude that the romances were read by the upper or noble class, and perhaps by a few particularly well-to-do members of the bourgeoisie²⁶⁹. Certainly they were not read by, nor to, the peasants²⁷⁰. We have still, however, to reconcile this with the statements in the Quijote quoted at the outset. With regard to Don Quijote's remark, we are free to dismiss anything he says, particularly in Part I, as the misconceptions of an insane person, for if he can believe windmills to be giants and sheep to be soldiers, he could just as well fantasize that the romances of chivalry were read with enthusiasm by all; he is not a reliable source. Furthermore, considering the tone of the Prologue to Part I, and the narrow interpretation Cervantes' friend takes of the purpose of the Quijote, the statement there could be merely another ironic note.

The comment of the canon from Toledo is not to be so easily dismissed. Whether or not he speaks for Cervantes²⁷¹, he is presented as a sober and serious man, deeply concerned about the course literature is taking. He is knowledge able, and he does not make jokes.

We can understand this comment properly if we remember that vulgo, in a literary context, meant in practice «the uneducated», without reference to a particular social class²⁷². This is spelled out in the well-known comment of Don Quijote to the Caballero del Verde Gabán: «Todo aquel que no sabe, aunque sea señor y príncipe, puede y debe entrar en número de vulgo» (II, 16). In the light of this passage, the canon's comment is indeed explicable. The intelligentsia (of which the canon would have formed a part) was never the class that read the romances of chivalry; they were responsible for the Erasmian and moralist complaints against them. If, but only if, the word vulgo is understood without class implication, as merely meaning «todo aquel que no sabe», is it true that the romances were read by the vulgo²⁷³.

In conclusion, we should note that the evidence deduced from the Quijote about the readers of the romances of chivalry was never as unequivocal as it might have been. It is not true, as Madariaga says, that there is no one in the Quijote, except «perhaps» Sancho, who has not read the romances or heard them read²⁷⁴. When did Don Quijote's ama, or Tomé Cecial read them? Had la Tolosa or the galley slaves heard them read? A moment's reflection shows how extreme this statement is. Neither should the fact that the innkeeper Juan Palomeque had two romances of chivalry be taken to mean that they were read at every harvest in all the remote corners of Spain. The books were there because some traveller forgot them, and the illiterate innkeeper has no plans to buy any others. His wife didn't listen to them being read, his daughter didn't understand them, and Maritornes, who did not know what a caballero aventurero was (I, 16), listened for the worst possible reason.

From a slightly different perspective -looking at those characters who were well acquainted with the romances of chivalry- we find that the Quijote in fact confirms the thesis of this paper, that the romances were read by the middle and upper classes. Don Quijote, the priest, and perhaps the barber²⁷⁵, the canon, Dorotea, the various people at the ducal palace, and, perhaps, Luscinda and Sansón Carrasco, knew the romances well, but there is no representative of the peasantry among them. Yet only one, the canon, can clearly be excluded from the vulgo, as defined above.

The date(s) of the edition(s) consulted are given for those cases in which I have not been able to consult the princeps. No works which I have been able to examine have been omitted.

Amadís de Gaula, Books I-IV: No dedication.

Sergas de Esplandián (Amadís, Book V): No dedication.

Florisando (Amadís, Book VI): Juan de la Cerda (1485-1544), second Duke of Medinaceli. His son, Luis de la Cerda, married Ana de Mendoza, daughter of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, to whom Book IX was dedicated (Diego Gutiérrez Coronel, Historia genealógica de la casa de Mendoza, ed. A. González Palencia [Madrid: CSIC, 1946], I, 236).

Lisuarte de Grecia (Amadís, Book VII; 1548 edition, and according to Gayangos, 1525 edition): Diego de Deza (1443/44-1523), archbishop of Seville, «para descanso del trabajo de su mucho estudio». A. Cotarelo y Valledor, Fray Diego de Deza. Ensayo biográfico (Madrid, 1905), states that Deza was in the 1480's catedrático de prima de teología in Salamanca, inquisidor general of Castile from 1501 to 1507, and from 1504 on archbishop of Castile, but Mariano Alcocer y Martínez, head of the Archivo de Simancas, reveals in his Fray Diego de Deza y su intervención en el descubrimiento de América (Valladolid, 1927) the close relations of Fray Diego with the family of the Reyes Católicos: preceptor del príncipe, confesor of Fernando el Católico and of Juana la Loca, «doncel» de su Magestad, etc., which may, perhaps, explain why a romance of chivalry was dedicated to him. (Deza, of course, was one of the key figures to encourage Colón in the 1480's, and to intercede with the monarchs for him).

Silva says in the prologue to Lisuarte that he received «criança e mercedes» from Deza, but not enough is known of the lives of either to identify where this took place.

Fernández de Oviedo, who was mozo de cámara of the same prince (Juan) of whom Deza was preceptor, also mentions Deza, Quinquagenas, ed. cit., pp. 524-25; his extracto de la vida del Arzobispo Deza, which I have been unable to locate, is cited by Alcocer, p. 27.

Lisuarte de Grecia (Amadís, Book VIII): Jorge, Duke of Coimbra (1481-1550), bastard son of John II of Portugal.

Amadís de Grecia (Amadís, Book IX): Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1461-1531), third Duke of the Infantado, Marquis of Santillana, called «el gran duque». Silva, before his marriage (which took place near 1520; Cotarelo [supra, n. 244], p. 138), had falsely attributed the paternity of his wife Gracia Fe to this licentious figure.

The author of the Guerra de Granada, about whom the anecdote referred to in note 245 is told, belonged to a different branch of the family.

Florisel de Niquea (Amadís, Book X; 1566 edition): No dedication.

Rogel de Grecia (Florisel de Niquea, Part III; Amadís, Book XI): Francisco de Zúñiga de Sotomayor, third Duke of Béjar, the great-grandfather of the sixth Duke of Béjar, to whom Part I of the Quijote was dedicated.

Perhaps it was in the Duke of Béjar's library, if there was a collection of romances of chivalry, that Cervantes read these books which he knew so well (see my article, «Don Quijote y los libros de caballerías», in this volume). I hasten to point out that this is pure speculation, based on what may well be a coincidence.

Florisel de Niquea, Part IV (Amadís, Book XI): María de Austria (1528-1603), daughter of Carlos V and wife of Maximilian II of Hungary. Juan Rufo, much later, dedicated to her his Austriada.

Don Silves de la Selva (Amadís, Book XII): Luis Cristóbal Ponce de León (1518-1573), second Duke of Arcos, patron of the musicians Cristóbal de Morales and Juan Bermudo.

Pedro de Luján, author of Silves, later dedicated his translation of Leandro el Bel, as he did his Coloquios matrimoniales, to Juan Claros de Guzmán (>1518-1556), Count of Niebla, eldest son of Juan Alfonso de Guzmán, Duke of Medina-Sidonia.

Arderique: «Hieronimo de Artes, doncel».

Belianís de Grecia, Parts I and II: Pero Suárez de Figueroa y de Velasco, «dean de Burgos y abad de Hermedes y arcediano de Valpuesta, señor de la villa de Cozcurrita [Zamora]», «suplicando se reciba con aquella voluntad con que todos los antiguos criados de vuestra casa son tratados». He was probably a younger son of the counts of Feria. In Relaciones de los reinados de Carlos V y Felipe II, ed. Amalio Huarte, II, Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 2.ª época, Vol. 25 (Madrid, 1950), pp. 183 ff., can be found verses of Bernardino de Avellaneda dedicated to Suárez, «mi señor»; the date is 1546, one year earlier than the first edition of Belianís.

«Criado» did not necessarily mean, in this context, servant, but could merely mean anyone supported by a noble and who lived with him. Cervantes signs himself criado in the dedications to the Conde de Lemos (as does Sancho in his letter to Don Quijote).

Belianís de Grecia, Parts III and IV: «El licenciado Fuenmayor, cavallero de la orden de Santiago, del consejo real y camara de Su Magestad [Felipe II] mi señor». The dedication is by Andrés Fernández, the author's brother, who is the one who tells us how the continuation was written because Carlos V so much liked Parts I and II.

I believe that Fuenmayor, head of the council which granted the book's licencia, was Juan Díaz de Fuenmayor, to whom, after the King and the kingdom of Jaén, Argote de Molina dedicated his Nobleza de Andalucía.

Cirongilio de Tracia: Diego López Pacheco (1503-1556), second of this name, third Marquis of Villena. He was armed a knight in 1520 (Sandoval, Carlos V, BAE, 80, 208), and he was «al lado de Carlos V» in Italy (Fernández de Bethencourt, Historia genealógica y heráldica de la monarquia española, II [Madrid, 1900], 226), as was the Count of Astorga (v. Florambel, infra; Sandoval, BAE, 81, 366-67, also Pedro Mexía, Historia de Carlos V, ed. J. de Mat a Carriazo [Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1945], p. 550, etc.)

Clarián de Landanís, Part I, Book I: Charles de Lannoy (1482-1527), caballerizo mayor of Carlos V and from 1522 viceroy of Naples. (On the honorary office of caballerizo see the description in the Diccionario de Autoridades). An extremely important person, with whom the king jousted (Mexía, Historia de Carlos V, p. 86, on his later importance see p. 307 and passim; also see the Historia del capitán Hernando Dávalos of Pedro Vallés [Amberes, 1558], and Léon-E. Halkin and George Dansaert, Charles de Lannoy, viceroy de Naples [Brussels, 1934]. The book was allegedly «sacada de lenguaje aleman en italiano por Faderico [sic] de Maguncia obispo de Lanchano, por mandado del serenissimo rey Fernando de Napoles, primero deste nombre».

^___, Part I, Book II (1535 edition): Álvar Pérez de Guzmán, Count of Orgaz, by «maestre Alvaro, fisico suyo».

In the preface, the author says that «vuestra señoría... me mandó que una obra que ovo venido a sus manos, que fue principiada por otro, y es la segunda parte del muy famoso cavallero don Clarian de Landanís, de la qual no estavan aun escriptas treinta hojas, que la acabasse yo, porque fue informado vuestra señoría que la avía llevado a Sevilla e a Valladolid e a Toledo e a otras muchas partes para que la concluyessen».

Considering the lengths to which authors of romances of chivalry went to disguise their part in their works (see my article «The Pseudo-Historicity...» infra), this statement, that he is concluding the work of another, could be untrue, and an imitation of the letter of «el autor a un su amigo» of the recent Celestina. However, I believe it is true, because there exist, in point of fact, two different continuations of Part I of Clarián, the one presently under discussion, and the one treated of immediately following; they are not continuations of each other. I have not been able to examine thoroughly the present book, usually called Part I, Book 2 (however, it and the following «true» Part II begin with the same sentence); probably a proper study would clear up this problem, though the longevity of the controversy over the Celestina does not permit excessive optimism.

Floramante de Colonia (Clarián de Landanís, Part II, 1550 edition): John III of Portugal (1502-1577), «por saber de cierto que a semejantes cosas sois tan inclinado». One of the surviving manuscripts of the Portuguese Libro de Josep Abaramatia is dedicated to him (Mário Martins, O Livro de José de Arimateia da Torre do Tombo [Lisbon, 1952], pág. 13, apud María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, «Arthurian Literature in Spain and Portugal», in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. Roger Sherman Loomis [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959], pág. 408; in Spanish translation in her Estudios de literatura española y comparada, 2nd ed. [Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 19691, págs. 134-48).

Despite the fact that in the colophon the author of this part is stated to be Jerónimo López, «escudero fidalgo de la casa del rey d'Portugal», who we know wrote the following two parts, it has been noted by Gayangos, who had a good eye for such things (in Gallardo, Ensayo, I, No. 540), that in the verses at the end of the book, ostensibly written by «el trasladador» and directed to John III, there is an acrostic, formed by the first letter of each stanza, which spells Pedro Cabreor. Gayangos asks if Cabreor was a misprint for Cabrero, but it is not, and would be a most unusual Hispanic name. (It should be noted that in several places López refers to himself as the «trasladador», or translator; trasladar meant both to copy and to translate, as traducir was a much newer term and not as widely used).

In any event, that Jerónimo López is not a pseudonym is firmly established by the fact that he edited (not wrote, as Gayangos, citing Cardoso, says in BAE 40, p. lxxv^a, Fray Álvares' Cronica do... Iffante dom Fernando, describing himself in the colophon of the first (1527) edition, which has since disappeared, with exactly the same words: «corregida e emendada por Ieronimo Lopez escudeiro fidalgo da Caza delRey Nosso Senhor» (apud João Álvares, Obras, ed. Adelino de Almeida Calado [Coimbra: Acta Universitatis Conimbrigensis, 1960], I, xx). In this case, the only way López could fail to be the true author would be if someone else published a three-volume work, spread out over several years, under his name; this is unlikely in the extreme.

The identity and role of Cabreor await further investigation. I think that we must, however, reject Gayangos' hypothetical edition of this, the «true» Part II, in 1528 or earlier. Instead, the Toledo printer Villaquirán, who brought out the complete set (apparently he stopped printing from 1524 to 1530, which explains why Gaspar de Ávila, who had underwritten the printing of Part I, published Part IV; F. J. Norton, Printing in Spain 1501-20 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966], p. 54), mistook the work of «maestre Álvaro» as the true Part II and used it to make up his set, not noticing that Part III was not a continuation of his Part II.

Clarián de Landanís, Part III: John III of Portugal, «por un fidalgo de sua casa e criado a las migallas de sua mesa que ha por nombre Geronimo Lopez».

Lidamán de Ganayl (Clarián de Landanís, Part IV): Not stated, but clearly from the same author to John III: «O rey magno y bienaventurado, ¿por que assi vuestra alteza se olvida de un menor siervo e criado suyo, no queriendo recebir ni acebtar mi trabajo y desseo por servicio?»

Claribalte: Fernando de Aragón (1488?-1550?), Duke of Calabria. The circumstances of this dedication are discussed in detail by Antonello Gerbi, in «El Claribalte de Oviedo», Fénix, 6 (1949), 385-90.

It was mentioned above (n. 245) that the Duke of Calabria had at his death many romances of chivalry in his library, including one (Leonís de Grecia) which would otherwise be unknown to us. In 1526, he married Germaine of Foix, who was the widow of Fernando el Católico and of the Elector of Brandenburg, and older than he; they held in Valencia a literary court, described in El cortesano of Luis Milán, who later had as patron John III of Portugal. When she died in 1537, he married Mencía de Mendoza (see infra, s. v. Valerián).

On Germaine de Foix, see J. García Mercadal, La segunda mujer del Rey Católico (Barcelona: Juventud, 1942), and José M. Doussinague, Fernando el Católico y Germana de Foix: Un matrimonio por razón de estado (Madrid, 1944). I have not been able to see Luis Querol, La última reina de Aragón, virreina de Valencia (Valencia, 1931).

Cristalián de España: Prince Felipe [II].

Espejo de cavallerías, Part I (1533 edition): Martín de Córdoba y Velasco, «señor de las villas de Alcaudete y de Montemayor», «corregidor al presente en la imperial ciudad de Toledo».

^___, Part II (1533 edition): Diego López de Ayala, «vicario y canonigo y obrero en la santa iglesia de Toledo». One of the most important figures in the sixteenth-century Spanish church, who already in 1516 was Cisneros' agent in Flanders.

^___, Part III: «Al muy magnifico señor don Bernaldino de Ayala».

I am pleased to report that the apparently unique Huth copy of the princeps of Part III of the Espejo de cavallerías (Toledo: Juan de Ayala, 1547), has been located, miscatalogued («Roselao de Grecia»), in the Chapin Library at Williams College.

Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros [El Caballero del Febo], Part I: Martín Cortés (1532-1589), second Marqués del Valle, son of Hernán Cortés.

^___, Part II (1617 edition): No dedication.

^___, Part III [and IV]: Lucas Rodríguez, Count of Melgar. This romance has introductory sonnets, which was unusual for a romance of chivalry: besides those of the author, there is one of a certain Núñez de Figueroa, «médico andaluz», to Rodríguez, one of Luis Díaz de Montemayor to the same, and one to the author from Lorenzo de Zamora, who two years later was to dedicate his epic Historia de Sagunto to Victoria Colona, the wife of Rodríguez.

^___, Parts III and IV (1623 edition): Rodrigo de Sarmiento de Silva (1600-1664), Duke of Hijar and later a personage of considerable importance.

Febo el Troyano: Mencía Fajardo y Zúñiga, Marquise of los Vélez, «suplicando se reciba con aquella voluntad con que todos los criados de su casa son tratados». She was the widow of Luis Fajardo (1575), second Marquis of los Vélez, son of the first Marquis, to whom Floriseo was dedicated. This romance has introductory sonnets of Luis Alariv, Josepho Roger, and Benito Sánchez Galindo, the latter of whom published the same year (1576) his Christi victoria.

Felix Magno (1549 edition): Fadrique de Portugal, bishop of Sigüenza and viceroy of Cataluña, who ordered it printed, by his «criado», who notes «aunque el principal officio de vuestra señoría sea la milicia ecclesiástica, en el qual, como aya resplandecido, no ay quien no lo conozca y con grande admiraçión lo publique, no por esso se han embotado en vuestra señoría los exercicios militares, ansí por la línea y descendencia de sus reales progenitores, como por las virtudes y animosidad de su coraçón».

Felixmarte de Hircania: Juan Vázquez de Molina, secretary of the consejo de estado of Felipe II, trece of the order of Santiago. He was a nephew of Francisco de los Cobos, secretary of Carlos V: see Hayward Keniston, Francisco de los Cobos (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1959), passim. In 1523 he was already a «criado» of Cobos (Keniston, p. 71). Cobos, Molina, and the author Ortega were all from Úbeda.

Florambel de Lucea: Pero Álvarez Osorio, fourth Marquis of Astorga, Count of Trastamara. An important figure in Carlos V's court, who was faithful to him during the comuneros' revolt, and who was at the head of the army in Italy during the sack of Rome.

The romance was written by a certain Enciso, his criado. See also infra, Platir.

Florando de Inglaterra: «A los caballeros, dueñas y donzellas de Ulixea» [Lisbon].

Florindo: Juan Fernández de Heredia (1549), count of Fuentes (whom the author refers to as «mi señor»).

Floriseo: Pedro Fajardo y Chacón (1477?-?), first Marquis of los Vélez, adelantado of the kingdom of Murcia. See Gregorio Marañón, Vélez (supra, n. 260), pp. 31-57.

^___, Book 3 (Reymundo de Grecia): No dedication.

^___, Part II (?), Polismán (Biblioteca Nacional MS. 7839): Juan Franco Cristóbal de Yxar, Count of Belchite.

Lepolemo (Seville, n. d., edition): Íñigo López de Mendoza (1493-1566), eldest son of Diego Hurtado (v. supra, Amadís de Grecia), and later fourth Duke of the Infantado. The title «Count of Saldaña», which is all that appears on the book itself, was held by the oldest son of the Duke of the Infantado during the life of his father.

At his marriage in 1514 to Isabel de Aragón, cousin of Fernando el Católico, Fernando and Germaine de Foix were padrinos. On Íñigo López de Mendoza, see Francisco Layna Serrano, Historia de Guadalajara y sus Mendozas en los siglos XV y XVI (Madrid CSIC, 1942), III, 125-32.

Lidamarte [sic] de Armenia: Luis Enríquez de Cabrera, Duke of Medina de Rioseco (?). No one since Clemencín, Biblioteca de libros de cavallerías, Publicaciones cervantinas, 3 (Barcelona, 1942), p. 36, has seen the printed edition. Clemencín gives the title as Duke of Medina-Sidonia, which must be erroneous; if this information is correct, the person whose biography is found in CODOIN, 97, 131-70 must be a homonym. [I would like to thank Mary Lee Cozad for her kindness in sending me information regarding the dedication of this work, which confirms my suspicion that it was dedicated to the Duque de Medina de Rioseco, and not of Medinasidonia. According to her, there was never a printed edition of this work; what Clemencín had seen was a MS -that of Thomas Phillipps, now at Berkeley and used by Cozad- with a printed and factitious title page].

Lidamor de Escocia: Fernando Álvarez de Toledo (1508-1582), Duke of Alba.

Olivante de Laura: Felipe II (by the printer, not the author).

Palmerín de Olivia: Luis Fernández de Córdoba (1482-1554), son of Diego Hernández de Córdoba, 7th Alcaide de los Donceles, to whom was dedicated the Cárcel de Amor. See Diego de San Pedro, Obras, ed. Samuel Gili Gaya, Clásicos Castellanos, 133 (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1967), pp. xxviii-xxix, and Bethencourt, IX (Madrid, 1912), 53-60.

^___, (1563 and 1566 editions): From Benito Boyer, who had the 1563 edition printed, to Juan Álamos de Barrientos, «capitán de S. M. y regidor de Medina del Campo».

Primaleón: Luis Fernández de Córdoba.

Platir (a continuation of the preceding): Pero Álvarez Osorio and María Pimentel (see Florambel de Lucea, supra; it is likely that Platir and Florambel were written by the same person, and they were published by the same printer, Nicolás Tierri). I believe that María Pimentel was the daughter of Alonso Pimentel (?-1528?), fifth Count of Benavente, who fought with Osorio in resisting the comuneros, and that she was widow of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, who died in 1531, and mother of Íñigo (v. supra). Florambel, published in 1532, is dedicated to her husband alone, whereas Platir, of 1533, was dedicated to the two, suggesting a recent marriage.

Philesbián de Candaria: No dedication.

Policisne de Boecia: Antonio Álvarez Boorques, member of the order of Santiago, «gentilhombre de la casa real de su magestad [Felipe III], y veinticuatro de la ciudad de Córdoba».

Polindo (independent of Palmerín and Primaleón): No dedication.

Rosián de Castilla: Cristóbal de Guardiola, son of Juan de Guardiola, of the «consejo supremo de su magestad».

Valerián de Hungría: Mencía de Mendoza (1508-1554), second Marquise of Zenete, second wife of the Duke of Calabria (v. supra, Claribalte). She herself was the widow of Henry, Count of Nassau, another friend of Carlos V. «¿Qué princesa cultivó con más fruto la literatura griega y latina? ¿En quién despertaron más fervor los estudios?» asks García Matamoros, Pro adserenda hispanorum eruditione, ed. and trans. by José López de Toro, Anejo 28 of the RFE (Madrid, 1942), p. 227. There is an extensive note on her in Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo y España, trans. Antonio Alatorre, 2nd ed. (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1966), p. 487; see also Theodore S. Beardsley, Jr., in HR, 41 (1973), 170-214, and Oviedo, Memorias, ed. cit., p. 666. A letter from Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda to her was published by Ángel Losada in his edition of Sepúlveda's letters (Madrid: Cultura Hispánica, 1966), pp. 79-80.

It is noteworthy that the book was printed in Valencia, where she lived. Gayangos thought that in it were disguised the deeds of her father, Rodrigo de Vivar y Mendoza; I can neither confirm nor deny his statement at present.

Fiction, particularly prose fiction, did not have an easy birth²⁷⁶. It represented the Renaissance's most radical departure from classical literary models, and even though it met in many cases with overwhelming approval on the part of the book-buying public, it was rejected by purists and theoreticians until it had been established for generations, if not for centuries. This situation was aggravated by problems of vocabulary, as the complicated history of the words novela and roman illustrates. In Spain, the term historia had to serve a number of purposes in the sixteenth and, to a lesser extent, the seventeenth centuries²⁷⁷.

To some authors of prose fiction, the ambiguous status of what they wrote was unimportant, or even a source of amusement, but others, especially the authors of the Spanish romances of chivalry, were conscious of it to a considerable degree. The present article is an attempt to examine how these authors resolved the question of the nature of their works by de-emphasizing their fictional quality, and, briefly, how Cervantes was influenced by them.

The difficulty facing the authors of the romances of chivalry was particularly severe because the romances marked the introduction of this new type of literature into Castile. Faced with a sudden demand on the part of a noble class turned sedentary after the conclusion of the reconquest²⁷⁸, printers rapidly brought out editions of whatever chivalric material they could lay their hands on. This first stage in the history of the Spanish romances of chivalry ended with the publication of the Amadís de Gaula (before 1508), the Sergas de Esplandián (before 1510), and the Caballero Cifar (1512)²⁷⁹. The publication of these works did not satisfy the demand, however, but rather increased it, and the supply of pre-existing romances having run low, the time had come for the production of additional ones²⁸⁰.

The authors of the new romances, which were printed in large numbers during the following generation, had a model set for them by Montalvo, the person to whom we owe the version of the Amadís which has come down to us. At the beginning of his version, Montalvo says that the book:

Fue corregido y emendado por el honrrado y virtuoso cauallero Garci-Rodríguez de Montaluo, regidor de la noble villa de Medina del Campo, y corregióle de los antiguos originales que estauan corruptos y mal compuestos en antiguo estilo, por falta de los differentes y malos escriptores. Quitando muchas palabras superfluas y poniendo otras de más polido y elegante estilo tocantes a la cauallería y actos della.281

Montalvo clearly presents himself as an editor, not the author, though taking liberties with his text which would not be permissible today. The idea of an earlier source, whose provenance is unclear, is stressed²⁸². Throughout the work, he constantly uses formulas of historical writers: «dize la historia», «la historia contará adelante», «como la historia os ha contado»²⁸³.

Although sixteenth-century readers might have disagreed, we now know that Montalvo was truthful when speaking about an earlier source for Books I-III of the Amadís. When he comes to discussing Book IV, now taken to be his own work, he clearly distinguishes it from what he has done with the preceding books:

...corrigiendo estos tres libros de Amadís, que por falta de los malos escriptores, o componedores, muy corruptos y viciosos se leýan, y trasladando enmendando el libro quarto con las Sergas de Esplandián su hijo, que hasta aquí no es en memoria de ninguno ser visto, que por gran dicha paresció en vna tumba de piedra, que debaxo de la tierra en vna hermita, cerca de Constantinopla fue hallada, y traydo por un úngaro mercadero a estas partes de España, en letra y pargamino tan antiguo que con mucho trabajo se pudo leer por aquellos que la lengua sabían...284

He reemphasizes this in the heading to the Sergas de Esplandián proper:

Aquí comiença el ramo que de los quatro libros de Amadís sale llamado las Sergas de Esplandián, que fueron escritas en griego por la mano de aquel gran maestro Helisabad, que muchos de sus grandes fechos vio & oyó, como aquel que por el grande amor que a su padre Amadís tenía, se quiso poner en tan gran cuydado... Las quales Sergas después a tiempo fueron trasladadas en muchos lenguajes...285

We see the character «Montalvo» thus metamorphosized from editor to translator, inasmuch as the language of his «source» has changed from archaic Spanish to Greek. The change in language is, of course, implied by the shift in locale from western Europe to the eastern Mediterranean²⁸⁶. Most striking, however, is that Montalvo had to claim it was written in a foreign language at all.

This device (for that it is) solved several problems for Montalvo. It ostensibly freed him of responsibility for the work, except that of «translating» it correctly, while at the same time invested it with the allure of remote places, similar to the later use of eastern European locale in Golden Age drama. Above all, it allowed the book to be presented as the work of an eyewitness, an official chronicler, similar to a historian such as López de Ayala, who both recorded events and participated in them²⁸⁷.

Surely this pretense could not have been convincing more than once or twice. Yet with the notable exception of Palmerín de Olivia, every major sixteenth-century romance of chivalry I have been able to examine follows the example set by Montalvo, in that they are either «translations», or, in a few cases, «revisions» of an old Spanish text²⁸⁸. A considerable variety of «original languages» is represented: English, German, Latin, Arabic («Chaldean»), Hungarian, and Phrygian, as well as the frequent Greek²⁸⁹. Official historians, similar to Elisabat, wrote some of the romances; we can cite Fristón, familiar through the Quijote, who recorded the deeds of Belianís de Grecia, and Novarco, chronicler of Cirongilio de Tracia.

Many of the later authors went beyond Montalvo's relatively sophisticated device, however, and added additional details strengthening the presentation of themselves as mere translators. In several books we find two separate prologues, one of the «translator» and one of the «author». Such is the case with Lepolemo, a particularly interesting romance in view of its setting (North Africa) and the absence of fantastic elements. The Arab Xarton, who recorded the works of this Christian knight, introduces his work in a prologue full of Arabic formulae, and appropriately humble in tone:

PROLOGO DEL AUTOR MORO SACADO DEL ARABIGO EN LENGUA CASTELLANA Alabado sea Dios, grande por todas las cosas que haze. A ti, el gran Soldan Çulema, el mayor y mejor rey moro de tu tiempo, yo, Xarton, el menor y más obediente de tus vassallos, y mayor en la gana de hazer tu mandamiento, te presento este tratado que me mandaste escrevir...290

He concludes pointing out that it is not strictly proper for him to be writing about a Christian, and notes that it was only at the Sultan's request.

A second fictional author writes to the Conde de Saldaña under the heading «Prologo del interprete del presente libro». In it he explains how he came upon the book in «aquella barba la lengua araviga» when he was a captive in Tunis, and translated it there. He points out his concern for what critics may say, but he would not want -a topos of historians -that «quedasen tan notables hechos en olvido, haziendo escudo que si la orden dél no está a placer de todos, echen la culpa al moro que lo ordenó, pues en mi traducir no he salido de su estilo»²⁹¹.

Melchor Ortega, author of Felixmarte de Hircania, disguised his work through a series of translations, reminiscent of the medieval translation schools. The work was written, he tells us, by a certain Philosio Atheniense, translated from Greek into Latin by Plutarch [!], then from Latin into Tuscan by Petrarch [!!], from which language Ortega translated it into Castilian.

Returning to Montalvo, he also prefixed his own work with a story, at first glance ridiculously contrived, of how his source manuscript came into his fictional author's possession. In the Sergas itself (Chapter 99), the character Montalvo describes how he came to know the conclusion of it, and how his writing is really at the request of Urganda la Desconocida. This story should be understood as adding to the historicity of the work, rather than detracting, as it is not as unbelievable as it looks at first glance. Many literary discoveries have been made under similar extraordinary circumstances. Most recently, we have seen the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or in the preceding century the discovery in Egypt of the largest known fragment of Menander. In Hispanic studies, we can mention the aljamiado manuscripts buried in a box in the province of Zaragoza, the fragmentary manuscripts of Amadís and Roncesvalles, or the jarchas in manuscripts from the Cairo genizah. How much more common this type of discovery must have been in the early Renaissance! The rediscovery of Heliodorus²⁹², the manuscript of Catullus allegedly found in a Verona wineshop, or the discovery of Plautus early in fifteenth-century Italy²⁹³ are only some of the best-known examples²⁹⁴.

Various authors used this device of a fantastic story concerning the precedence of their manuscript. One of the more restrained is found at the beginning of Florambel de Lucea, where the author Enciso, criado of the Marqués de Astorga and presumably the author of Platir, claims the help of an unidentifiable friend:

Sabra V.S. que al tiempo que la serenisima infanta Doña Catalina, hija de los catolicos reyes Don Fernando y Doña Isabel (de gloriosa memoria), que agora es reina de Inglaterra, passó a se casar e intitular por reina y señora de aquella rica isla, se halló a la sazon en su servicio en la ciudad de Londres un notable varon español, cuyo nombre no he podido saber... Pues como este era inclinado a ver cosas nuevas, y muy dado a saber las antiguas antigüedades, procuró de aver en su poder las historias de los reyes de Inglaterra pasados, y entre las muchas que rebolvio halló esta de aquel invencible y esforçado cavallero Florambel de Lucea. Y pareciole tan bien, y tomó tanta aficion con ella, que se determinó de traduzirla de la lengua inglessa en que estava en la nuestra castellana, y traerla a España...295

The role of Enciso was merely that of correcting the translation²⁹⁶.

In two works, Olivante de Laura and Marcos Martínez's Tercera parte del Espejo de príncipes y caballeros, we find a long prologue, in which the «author» undergoes an adventure reminiscent of that of Montalvo (Sergas de Esplandián, 99), which culminates in the receipt of the manuscript which he is charged with translating. In that of Martínez, who was more successful in his romance of chivalry than was Antonio de Torquemada, author of Olivante de Laura, the fictional author explains in the prologue the extraordinary series of events which happened to him on Midsummer's Day. Having gone out from Alcalá de Henares to relax in the countryside, through a quarrel of love-struck shepherds he learns of the existence of the cave of Sifronio de Anglante. At first setting off to see it, when he decides to turn back because it is too far a wind picks him up and deposits him at the door, where the evil Selagio threatens to kill him, but is instead killed by Artemidoro and Lirgandeo (on whom see below). These give the bewildered Martínez a sword²⁹⁷, telling him he must kill with it «los nueve de la fama», beginning with King Arthur, who guard the cave. Having done this (for the sword was enchanted; presumably the guards were apparitions), he enters the cave, which has now turned into a palace, and is given a tour of all its murals of famous knights²⁹⁸, culminating in his receipt of the book, written in Greek and Latin, in parallel columns.

Artemidoro and Lirgandeo are the two «authors» of the Espejo de príncipes y caballeros, characters created by Diego Ortúñez de Calahorra, author of Part I. By adding a second «author» Ortúñez imposed upon himself another requirement of the historian, that of evaluating and combining two different sources. The two occasionally disagree among themselves, as real historians might (one thinks of Alfonso el Sabio's compilers struggling to reconcile Lucas Tudense and Rodrigo Toledano):

Este valentísimo y bienaventurado príncipe, dize el sabio Artemidoro que nasció luego que el emperador con toda su compañía vino del reino de Lidia, porque quando el fuerte pagano Rodarán pasó en Grecia, ya la emperatriz Briana estava gran preñada. Parece que discordia en esto el sabio Lirgandeo, porque no cuenta cosa del infante hasta que las grandes batallas del emperador Alicandro de Tartaria y el emperador Trebacio de Grecia fueron acabadas, de donde comiença a contar cosas suyas muy maravillosas. Yo creo que la causa desto deve ser que como el sabio Lirgandeo no lo vio hasta que vino en Grecia, que dexó de contar dél hasta que todas las batallas fueron acabadas... Y ansí, hasta aquel tiempo no se cuenta dél más de en este capítulo, porque después comiençan los dos sabios a escrevir cosas muy grandes y maravillosas dél, y se conforman en todo lo que escriven.299

In other romances of chivalry, we see other «histories» mentioned, as in the following quotation from Feliciano de Silva's Florisel de Niquea: «Y el principe Anaxartes [quedó] con su esposa, con tanto descanso cuanto con pena lo habia deseado, que fue tanta por ambas partes cuanto su gran historia hace entera relacion, porque como la reina Zirfea aqui de tantos hace relacion, no pudo particularizar las cosas de cada uno, como en sus historias particulares se cuenta...³⁰⁰»

Closely related to their pseudo-historicity is a second characteristic of all the Spanish romances of chivalry, their deliberate inconclusiveness. The modern novel is normally expected to arrive at a logical conclusion, and then stop, and although we make allowances for certain multi-volume works, no story is permitted to go on indefinitely; a conclusion must be reached sometime.

History, however, is not subject to the same restrictions, and in tacit recognition of the resistance of events to be broken down into logical segments, a certain amount of arbitrariness is accepted in the conclusion of a historical work. The authors of the romances of chivalry recognized this, and further simulated historical writers by deliberately accentuating the artificiality of the endings of their works. Although the physical book had to come to an end, the story does not, just as real events would not. Precisely when a happy resolution seems at hand, something occurs to prevent the «story» from ending. Characteristically, a new element, problem, or character is introduced, creating not only the possibility but the necessity of a sequel to the romance. For example, near the end of Part II of Belianís de Grecia³⁰¹, the conclusion of the work seems appropriate, as the various nations (Greeks, Trojans, Babylonians) taking part in the work are at peace, after a series of hostilities. Yet the seed of a new conflict is there, in a marriage designed to cement the peace; two knights desire the lady in question, and open warfare is about to break out again. To prevent this, Fristón, the magician-author of the work, whisks all the ladies of the court away and places them in an enchanted castle. The tranquility in Babylonia ends as the knights start off to seek them out; at this point the book ends.

This inconclusiveness -sometimes only the birth of a son of whom great things are prophesied- might have served at times as a device to permit the author to continue writing, but it was felt as a requirement of the genre quite apart from the author's intentions. Thus, Jerónimo López, author of Lidamán de Ganail, Part IV of Clarián de Landanís, states that a continuation exists, but «quien saberlo quisiere junte la mano con el papel, y tome alguna parte del gran trabajo que yo he tenido en sacar esta cronica del lenguaje aleman en el vulgar castellano»³⁰². A similar statement is found at the end of the second Lisuarte de Grecia, Book VIII of the Amadís family³⁰³.

Cervantes, of course, was aware of all of this in writing Don Quijote. If the authors of romances of chivalry found their manuscripts in remote places and incredible circumstances, his persona will find his being sold as waste paper in Toledo. (What were found under such «honorific» circumstances were the ridiculous verses which conclude Part I). He speaks, at the end of Part I, of a continuation which could not be obtained, as did Avellaneda at the end of his continuation; perhaps Cervantes would have similarly concluded Part II, if his anger at Avellaneda had not led him to break an unwritten rule of the romances of chivalry and cause his protagonist to die. Cide Hamete has been, if grudgingly, recognized as inspired in the «chroniclers» of the romances of chivalry. In fact, particularly in view of his exaggerated concern for accuracy, he is a parody of them. The whole presentation of the Quijote as a history, rather than fiction, is based on this pretense of the romances of chivalry.

Don Quijote era, sobre todas las cosas, un hombre que había leído mucho, y es poco probable que se pueda llegar a una comprensión satisfactoria de su personalidad sin volver a leer algunos de sus libros predilectos³⁰⁴. Más aun, ninguna parodia puede ser adecuadamente apreciada si no se estudia sistemáticamente el objeto que ridiculiza. Sin embargo, en los últimos años los estudiosos han descuidado el estudio del Quijote a la luz de los libros de caballerías que inspiraron a Cervantes y a su héroe. Los especialistas en estos libros, como Pascual de Gayangos o Sir Henry Thomas, no se han considerado lo suficientemente peritos en la obra de Cervantes como para intentarlo. Los cervantistas, de otra parte, no han tenido por lo general acceso a los textos de los libros de caballerías³⁰⁵.

Para el conocimiento de la materia tenemos que volver al único estudio que pretendió ser comprensivo, el de Diego Clemencín . Clemencín, quien es todavía la persona más familiarizada con los libros de caballerías desde el siglo diecisiete, comenzó en 1833 la publicación de su monumental edición del Quijote, proyecto concluido póstumamente por sus amigos. Las notas que acompañan su texto son una mina de informaciones sobre los libros de caballerías. Como creía que una de las funciones principales de la crítica literaria era el estudio de las fuentes de la obra, intentó leer el mayor número posible de los libros que Cervantes conocía, incluyendo cuantos libros de caballerías que pudo encontrar. Su proyecto se hizo posible porque tuvo acceso a varias bibliotecas privadas³⁰⁶.

Francisco Rodríguez Marín hizo mucho por negarle a Clemencín el puesto que merece en la crítica cervantina y caballeresca. En su edición del Quijote, el más importante de este siglo, critica en forma detallada, y a veces con gusto evidente, las faltas y defectos de Clemencín, a menudo los del terreno lingüístico³⁰⁷. Ello no es una falla grave; después de todo, parte esencial de toda crítica es anotar los errores de los predecesores. Más inquietante, sin embargo, es que Rodríguez Marín no sólo no añade nada importante a nuestro conocimiento de los libros de caballerías (lo cual hubiera sido fácil para él, ya que era Director de la Biblioteca Nacional), sino que da un paso atrás al no incluir en sus notas muchos de los valiosísimos comentarios de Clemencín. Por ejemplo, cuando Don Quijote, al ponerse el nombre caballeresco de Caballero de la Triste Figura, explica que lo hace para ser como los caballeros de antaño, que tenían nombres similares, «cuál se llamaba el de la Ardiente Espada, cuál, el del Unicornio, aquél, el de las Doncellas, aqueste, el del Ave Fénix, el otro, el Caballero del Grifo, estotro, el de la Muerte» (I, 19), Clemencín identifica los caballeros a quienes se refiere³⁰⁸. Este tipo de ayuda no se encuentra, sin embargo, en las notas de Rodríguez Marín, donde sólo hay un comentario sobre un cambio que introdujo en el texto. Dos veces en Don Quijote se menciona a Lirgandeo: en I, 43, donde Don Quijote lo invoca, junto a Alquife, y en II, 34, donde es una de las figuras que desfilan en el palacio ducal. Clemencín, pero no así Rodríguez Marín, le identifica como un «sabio» que aparece en el Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros. No son ejemplos aislados, más bien reflejan la tendencia de Rodríguez Marín de tratar sólo lo mínimo inevitable en sus notas al material caballeresco³⁰⁹.

Para poder evaluar el tratamiento de Clemencín a los libros de caballerías desde un punto de vista cuantitativo es preciso determinar cuántos libros conocía Cervantes. Al mismo tiempo podemos estudiar el alcance del conocimiento que éste tenía, si nos detenemos a considerar primero cuántos libros de caballerías había, cuestión que no puede decidirse con certeza. La lista cronológica de Thomas al comienzo del Capítulo V de su Spanish and Portuguese Romances of Chivalry incluye 39, excluyendo las obras portuguesas y continuaciones sin nuevo título. A este número hay que añadir dos obras que Cervantes pensó que eran castellanas, aunque se sabe que no lo son, Palmerín de Inglaterra y Tirante el Blanco³¹⁰, y dos obras que Thomas desconocía, Lidamarte de Armenia, de Damasio de Frías (1590)³¹¹, y Rosián de Castilla, de Joaquín Romero de Cepeda (Lisboa: Marcos Borges, 1586)³¹²

De éstos, muchas se mencionan por su título en el Quijote. Un buen número se comentan en el «escrutinio de la librería»: el fundador del género en España, el Amadís de Gaula, así como su progenie, las Sergas de Esplandián y Amadís de Grecia; Olivante de Laura, Lepolemo (El Caballero de la Cruz), Florismarte (por Felixmarte) de Hircania, el Espejo de caballerías, mitad italiano, mitad español³¹³, Palmerín de Olivia y sus descendientes Platir y Palmerín de Inglaterra, y Belianís de Grecia. En otro lugar del Quijote se hace referencia al Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros (El Caballero del Febo [I, 1]), Cirongilio de Tracia (I, 32), Lisuarte de Grecia (II, 1), y las obras de Feliciano de Silva (I, 1), por las que hemos de entender los populares «dezeno» y «onzeno del Amadís», Florisel de Niquea y Rogel de Grecia³¹⁴, y no las otras obras, menos populares y más antiguas, que hoy se aceptan como suyas³¹⁵.

Desde luego, no se sigue necesariamente que el libro haya sido leído porque se cite su título o un personaje. En muchos casos, sin embargo, junto a los títulos de los libros de caballerías hay información adicional que demuestra que Cervantes tenía un conocimiento por lo menos superficial, y en algunos casos profundo, del libro. Por ejemplo, es seguro que Cervantes sabía más del Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros que el nombre del protagonista, porque en el soneto preliminar del Caballero del Febo se refiere a varios episodios del libro. El ventero cuenta en el Capítulo I, 32 algunos pormenores de sus libros; Cervantes conocía lo suficiente de Belianís de Grecia como para saber cuán belicoso era su protagonista y cuántas curas maravillosas había recibido. El conocimiento que Cervantes tenía de Tirante el Blanco era tan completo que se acordó del insignificante caballero Fonseca³¹⁶.

La otra posibilidad -si uno supone que el conocimiento que Cervantes tenía de los libros de caballerías era muy limitado- es creer que escogió como sujeto de su obra satírica un tipo de literatura de la cual sabía poco o nada, y que para encontrar los motivos para su burla preguntaba a sus amigos sobre lo que les parecía ridículo en los libros de caballerías. Los humoristas no trabajan así, por lo menos no los grandes; y, además, hacia finales del siglo dieciséis si uno quería saber algo de los libros de caballerías, tenía que leerlos por cuenta propia. En los círculos literarios poca gente en España les prestaba la menor atención.

Está claro también, aun de los títulos explícitamente mencionados en el Quijote, que el interés de Cervantes por estos libros le llevó a investigarlos en serio, y que no quedó satisfecho con hojear los que se conseguían fácilmente. Vemos que estaba familiarizado con los libros más recientes, como Olivante de Laura, de 1564, y con los clásicos del género. Sorprende, sin embargo, que conociera Tirante el Blanco, pues la obra no tuvo ninguna popularidad en Castilla, nunca se imprimió después de su única edición (1511) y pronto fue olvidada³¹⁷. Platir -un «antiguo libro», como anotó el cura- dormía el mismo sueño del olvido.

Debemos detenernos un momento y preguntarnos cómo y dónde leía Cervantes esos libros, puesto que era hombre de pocos medios y los libros no eran baratos; Don Quijote tuvo que vender «muchas hanegas de tierra de sembradura» para poder mantener su vicio. Y del mismo modo que Don Quijote debe haber pasado trabajo en obtener esos libros en La Mancha, ni entonces ni ahora un centro cultural, así a Cervantes, aun cuando tuviera el dinero, le hubiera sido difícil comprar esos libros raros de hace varias generaciones. Todo ello lleva a pensar que quizás Cervantes no compró los libros, sino que los leía en alguna colección formada cuando los libros de caballerías estaban en su apogeo. Esto sería aun más probable si fuera cierto que Cervantes «descubrió» los libros de caballerías no en su juventud, para despreciarlos después -el caso de tantos- sino cuando ya era un hombre maduro, y más alejado de la cumbre de popularidad del género.

De los libros de caballerías cuyos títulos están citados en el Quijote y que por tanto deben ser los primeros a examinarse como posibles fuentes cervantinas, hay por lo menos cuatro que Clemencín no pudo estudiar. Uno de ellos, Platir, es muy raro. Los otros tres también son raros, pero no más que los otros libros de caballerías; son Felixmarte de Hircania, Cirongilio de Tracia y Florisel de Niquea de Feliciano de Silva, Libro X de la serie de los Amadises. Clemencín no oculta el hecho de que no pudo encontrar ejemplares de dichas obras³¹⁸. Trató de compensar esa situación leyendo muchas obras cuyos títulos no se mencionan. Encontró seña que muestra que Cervantes conocía por lo menos una novela no mencionada en su obra, y Rodríguez Marín encontró indicio parecido respecto a otra. En el debate que el canónigo de Toledo sostiene con Don Quijote sobre los libros de caballerías, afirma: «¿Qué ingenio, si no es del todo bárbaro e inculto, podrá contentarse leyendo que una gran torre llena de caballeros va por la mar adelante, como nave con próspero viento, y hoy anochece en Lombardía, y mañana amanezca en tierras del Preste Juan de las Indias, o en otras que ni las describió Tolomeo ni las vio Marco Polo?» (I, 47). Ésta es, como correctamente anotó Clemencín, una referencia explícita a Florambel de Lucea, publicado en 1532 y reimpreso en 1548.

El descubrimiento de Rodríguez Marín es particularmente sorprendente porque ocurrió por casualidad. Mientras ordenaba libros para una exposición cervantina, abrió al azar un ejemplar del Libro IV de Clarián de Landanís, otra obra que Cervantes nunca mencionó, y encontró allí nada menos que un Caballero de la Triste Figura, así como un Caballero de los Espejos (uno de los nombres que usa Sansón Carrasco). ¡Quién sabe lo que hubiera encontrado de haber leído el libro completo! Pero se contentó con hojear «una buena parte»³¹⁹.

Aunque otros libros de caballerías no mencionados en el Quijote no ofrezcan tantas sorpresas, sin duda ha llegado la hora de llenar las lagunas de la obra de Clemencín, y de hacer un estudio lo más a fondo posible del corpus completo de los libros de caballerías, como se conoce hoy en día³²⁰. Es, sin embargo, igualmente importante darnos cuenta que la mayor parte del trabajo que llevó a cabo Clemencín no puede considerarse aceptable a la luz de criterios y normas modernos; poca de la crítica literaria de comienzos del siglo pasado lo es. En muchos casos trabajó con una desventaja, en la medida que tenía que referirse a libros que había leído y anotado hacía muchos años que no podía fácilmente consultar de nuevo. Por consiguiente, encontramos notas como la siguiente: «De la amistad de Alquife con Urganda, con quien vino a casar en segundas nupcias, se habla largamente, no me acuerdo bien si en la historia de Esplandián o en la de Amadís de Grecia»³²¹. Clemencín carecía además de instrumentos críticos que hoy damos por sentado. No tenía conciencia de problemas de estilo, oral y escrito, de modo que sólo por intuición se conoce todavía el alcance del lenguaje caballeresco de Cervantes y de Don Quijote³²². Tenía conciencia de la trama sólo en el sentido amplio de los episodios que Don Quijote emprendía o padecía; a menudo no comenta episodios y encuentros menores ni sus fuentes literarias. Debemos señalar que a Clemencín no le gustaban los libros de caballerías, y los leía sólo por su dedicación al texto cervantino. Creía que Cervantes había escrito el Quijote para acabar con ellos, y comenta extensamente la aparente justificación que tuvo para así obrar en el prólogo a su comentario. No deja de ser significativo que una de las notas más largas de Clemencín sea el comentario sobre los «desaforados disparates» que, según el canónigo de Toledo, llenaban las páginas de los libros de caballerías. Comienza así: «¿De qué género los quiere el lector? ¿históricos, geográficos, cronológicos? ¿Ponderaciones monstruosas, relaciones absurdas, desatinos contrarios a la razón, y al sentido común? De todo hay con abundancia en los libros caballerescos...» (nota 34 a I, 47). Este punto de vista le llevó a hacer unos comentarios desfavorables y muy repetidos sobre los libros de caballerías, como su sucinta condena del Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros, libro «pesado» y «fastidioso» (nota 16 al I, 1), o su nota sobre las muchas heridas que sufrió Belianís de Grecia: «Sólo en los dos primeros libros de los cuatro de que consta, se cuentan ciento y una heridas graves, y probablemente son más las de los dos libros que siguen; pero no me ha alcanzado la paciencia para contarlas, y no ha sido menester poca para hacerlo en los dos primeros» (nota 11 a I, 1). Es probable que sus comentarios hayan sido afectados por ello de manera aun más profunda.

Unos descubrimientos sobre el Quijote, hechos en el curso de un examen preliminar de los libros de caballerías, muestran también la necesidad de un estudio metódico. Una de las aventuras más cómicas del libro, aquella en que Maritornes deja a Don Quijote colgando del brazo en la venta, puede haber sido inspirada por un episodio similar en Cirongilio de Tracia³²³. Este libro (como se dijo arriba, uno de los que Clemencín no pudo obtener) sólo es mencionado por Gayangos³²⁴ y Menéndez Pelayo³²⁵; Thomas habla del libro sólo para ridiculizarlo, como hacía tantas veces³²⁶. Aunque no es necesario estar de acuerdo con el autor del colofón del libro, quien asegura que el lenguaje de la obra supera al latín ciceroniano, el libro no carece de mérito, y a ratos se puede notar el marcado esfuerzo del autor para alcanzar un estilo refinado.

Se trata del episodio siguiente: en el Cirongilio hay un caballero que se divierte burlándose de los demás. A éste se le llama el Caballero Metabólico, nos dice el autor (confundiendo la palabra con «metamórfico») por los disfraces que usa al llevar a cabo sus trucos (III, 12). Vestido de doncella, logra robarles los caballos a dos caballeros, mediante una serie de engaños (III, 13). No les queda más remedio que comprarle a él sus propios caballos, y le hacen la oferta en las afueras de su castillo. El Caballero Metabólico se niega a abrirles las puertas de su castillo, pero desde una torre les baja una canasta en una soga para subir a un escudero junto con el dinero. Una vez que el escudero ha subido hasta la mitad, amarra firmemente la soga, se va y le deja (III, 14). El escudero se las arregla para escaparse, usando el dinero para sobornar a uno de los criados del castillo que le baje. El mismo criado permite que los caballeros entren al castillo, y ellos con mucho gusto se vengan del Caballero Metabólico, suspendiéndole con sogas por las muñecas³²⁷.

Otro hallazgo tiene que ver con la Cueva de Montesinos, episodio central de la Segunda Parte del Quijote. Pone de nuevo en duda el crédito que merece Clemencín, ya que su fuente se encuentra en una obra que se supone él había estudiado. Entre otros ejemplos de cuevas, Clemencín cita uno del Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros (última nota a Don Quijote, II, 22), pero como ilustración más importante de esta aventura cita un episodio de las Sergas de Esplandián (nota 41 a Don Quijote, II, 23). María Rosa Lida desarrolló ese paralelo³²⁸. Pero las semejanzas entre la aventura de la Cueva de Montesinos en el Quijote y la Cueva de Artidón en el Espejo de príncipes son tan numerosas que sugieren que el Espejo de príncipes fue, si no la única, por lo menos la fuente principal de esta importante aventura³²⁹.

Mientras que en las Sergas de Esplandián, 99, es el autor Montalvo quien, por accidente, cae en un pozo innominado, tanto en Don Quijote II, 22 como en el Espejo de príncipes, II, 4 y 5 es un protagonista quien entra a una famosa cueva en busca de aventuras. Tanto Rosicler, quien lleva a cabo la aventura en el Espejo de príncipes, como Don Quijote se preocupan por sus respectivas damas, a diferencia de lo que ocurre con Montalvo. Don Quijote llega a «ver» a su dama, hecho de gran importancia para él; Rosicler se entera de la suya. En ambas cuevas, la de Artidón y la de Montesinos, nos topamos con un amante muerto, en un caso con el corazón al descubierto, en el otro extirpado; ambos hablan cuando es necesario, pero parcamente. En ambos casos la dama deseada se encuentra allí también.

Clemencín tampoco se dio cuenta en su lectura del Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros que Lirgandeo, uno de los dos «autores» de la obra, comenta la historia de una manera sorprendentemente similar a la de Cide Hamete en sus «notas marginales». Cuando el autor, Diego Ortúñez de Calahorra, aparece como narrador, su tono es similar al de Cervantes cuando le oímos hablar³³⁰.

Hay, además, episodios en Don Quijote que se destacan por estar claramente inspirados en los libros de caballerías; aunque no sea por ninguno en particular. Por ejemplo, la descripción en I, 9 de la batalla de Don Quijote con el vizcaíno es una deliciosa parodia de los clichés que se usaban en las descripciones de duelos en los libros de caballerías: la apariencia feroz, el golpe detenido por la fortuna, el golpe que arranca parte de la armadura. Por otra parte, el hecho de que Don Quijote huya de su casa para iniciar sus aventuras no tiene significado psicológico profundo, como creía Madariaga³³¹. Era, de hecho, costumbre de los caballeros andantes iniciar secretamente sus aventuras. Generalmente, sus familiares y amigos estaban interesados en retenerles en casa, puesto que creían por una u otra razón -muchas veces su juventud- que no estaban preparados para la exigente profesión de la caballería andante. Por ello, tenían forzosamente que comenzar en secreto sus aventuras.

En el campo del estilo, Hatzfeld ha visto en el uso que Cervantes hace de las oraciones condicionales irreales «la gran idea de la condicionalidad del ideal»³³². Sin embargo, esa estructura oracional es un rasgo común de los libros de caballerías y otras narraciones caballerescas, que Cervantes imita, con o sin saberlo. Unos ejemplos, fácilmente encontrados, servirán de muestra:

Don Belianis hiziera lo mesmo [caería del caballo], si no se tuviera con esforçado animo con el braço derecho al cuello del cavallo.

(Belianís de Grecia, edición de 1587, fol. 40v)

El gigante, aunque fue desatinado del golpe, como lo vio tan cerca tirole a la cabeça, y el Donzel del Aventura no tuvo tiempo de apartarse, y alço el escudo, sobre el qual dio el gigante tal golpe que se lo corto hasta que el espada llego al yelmo, y fue tan cargado que le hizo poner la una rodilla en tierra, y a no estar el gigante desatinado del gran golpe que recibio en la cabeça, sin duda con este solo diera fin a su batalla.

(Felixmarte de Hircania, fols. 72v-73r)

Dio de través por medio de la cintura al Cavallero de Cupido un tan furioso golpe que en dos partes le partiera, si no fueran las armas templadas por el gran saber de Artemidoro.

(Espejo de príncipes y cavalleros, III, 248).

Muchas veces lo que no se descubre en una investigación es tan iluminador como lo descubierto en ella; ejemplo es el papel de la magia en los libros de caballerías. Aunque casi siempre está presente, es generalmente más benigna que mala. Casi todo caballero tenía un «sabio», entre cuyas habilidades se encontraba el poder mágico, para protegerle; es raro que encontremos encantadores malignos, y ciertamente no se transformaban en feas las mujeres hermosas. Y así la paranoia de Don Quijote se destaca aún más: el manchego no explica el mundo en términos de los libros de caballerías, sino en términos de sus propias necesidades psicológicas.

Por último, resulta claro, si ya no lo fuera, que el libro predilecto de Don Quijote era con mucho el Amadís de Gaula. Esta obra que, independientemente de la lengua en que fuera escrita originalmente, es poco española en cuanto a su contenido espiritual o amoroso, es mucho más sentimental que ningún otro libro de caballerías español, en los que la acción, más que el amor, es el interés central. La devoción de Don Quijote por Dulcinea, que es una fuerza constante a través de todo el libro, sólo pudo tener como modelo la de Amadís por Oriana.

En conclusión, es imperativo que se estudie a fondo las fuentes caballerescas del Quijote, previo al estudio del humor cervantino³³³. Las obras están accesibles a todos, gracias a las colecciones privadas de libros de caballerías que han pasado ya a las bibliotecas públicas; en microfilme se puede reunir todas las obras que es de suponer formaban la biblioteca de Don Quijote, hasta ahora un sueño común pero irrealizable de los bibliófilos cervantinos. La bibliografía española ha progresado hasta el punto de que ahora sabemos donde se encuentra por lo menos un ejemplar de casi todos los libros de caballerías³³⁴. Basado en una interpretación moderna de todos los aspectos del Quijote, y sin el prejuicio decimonónico contra los libros de caballerías, tal estudio sería en extremo provechoso, tanto para la comprensión del Quijote como para la de los libros que lo dieron origen. Sólo nos falta comenzar.

The statement concerning Tirant lo Blanch found in Chapter 6 of the Quijote should, by any reasonable standard, by now be a dead issue³³⁵. Since Diego Clemencín first labeled this single paragraph as «el pasaje más oscuro del Quijote», almost a century and a half have gone by, and fourteen articles, excluding this one, have been devoted specifically to it³³⁶, as well as a multitude of treatments of it within larger studies³³⁷. Yet, astonishing as it may seem, there has been virtually no agreement on the questions raised about the passage: whether it was intended as praise or censure of the Tirant, the motives for such praise or censure, whether the words mean what they seem to mean³³⁸, and whether the text -may be trusted³³⁹. Without being able to evaluate individually each of the interpretations proposed, this paper attempts to present additional evidence leading to an interpretation which is in harmony with the text as it stands, and with the normal meaning of the words and expressions in the passage.

I would like to pause briefly to read the paragraph to you. After deciding to dispose of the remaining romances of chivalry without further examination, «por tomar muchos juntos», one fell on the floor, and it turned out to be Tirante el Blanco. The passage continues as follows:

-¡Válame Dios! -dijo el Cura, dando una gran voz-. ¡Que aquí esté Tirante el Blanco! Dádmele acá, compadre; que hago cuenta que he hallado en él un tesoro de contento y una mina de pasatiempos. Aquí está don Quirieleisón de Montalbán, valeroso caballero, y su hermano Tomás de Montalbán, y el caballero Fonseca, con la batalla que el valiente de Tirante hizo con el alano, y las agudezas de la doncella Placerdemivida, con los amores y embustes de la viuda Reposada, y la señora Emperatriz, enamorada de Hipólito su escudero. Dígoos verdad, señor compadre, que, por su estilo, es éste el mejor libro del mundo: aquí comen los caballeros, y duermen, y mueren en sus camas, y hacen testamento antes de su muerte, con estas [«otras», in Cuestas second and many later editions] cosas de que todos los demás libros deste género carecen. Con todo esto, os digo que merecía el que le compuso340, pues no hizo tantas necedades de industria, que le echaran a galeras por todos los días de su vida. Llevadle a casa y leedle, y veréis que es verdad cuanto dél os he dicho.

The problem which has received so much comment is the apparent inconsistency between the priest's enthusiasm for the book, and the condemnation of the author to the galleys.

I think that this passage can be understood properly only by examining the personality of the character whose words we hear: Pero Pérez, the priest who carries out the «escrutinio» -or rather, destruction- of Don Quijote's library, following the suggestion of the housekeeper that the books be burned. Pérez is one of the most significant among the minor characters of Part I of the Quijote. He is usually mentioned in the same breath as his friend and companion the barber, but the priest is by far the more important of the two, and, especially at the beginning, dominates his companion in a manner not unlike that in which Don Quijote dominates Sancho. It is the priest, for example, who initiates the expedition to return Don Quijote to his village, and it is he who discusses literature with the canon from Toledo. It is not until the conclusion of Part I that the barber initiates a conversation or expresses an independent point of view³⁴¹.

The priest is a particularly intriguing figure since, although there is a great deal to laugh at in Part I, usually accepted as the more humorous of the two parts, the priest is one of the few characters who are funny by intent, rather than involuntarily³⁴². He is, from the very beginning; presented as a humorous character, since he was a graduate of the University of Sigüenza. Clemencín, in a note which Rodríguez Marín did not see fit to reproduce, pointed out that because of its intellectual level, even to name this university was humorous; Cervantes drives the humor home by slyly observing that the priest was an «hombre docto». It is, in fact, the priest who, in view of his knowledge of romances of chivalry, suggests the extremely comical, although logical, disguise as a damsel in distress by which to trick Don Quijote into returning to his village, and the priest encourages his chivalric talk, «gustando de oírle decir tan grandes disparates» (II, 1). It is the priest who baits Don Quijote by mentioning the galeotes who had been freed, rumor had it, by «algún hombre sin alma y sin conciencia» (I, 29). It is the priest who would have Sancho worry about his master becoming an arzobizpo andante; it is the barber who allays his fears (I, 26).

This, then, is the person who takes it upon himself to examine the contents of Don Quijote's library, and who delivers in the process of the examination a series of most remarkable literary judgments, though perhaps not so remarkable as the fact that they have been repeatedly taken as completely serious³⁴³. There are 27 titles commented on specifically, out of the more than 300 books which Don Quijote had in his library (I, 24); three others are also mentioned which were not found in it. The priest, who insists on at least reading the titles of the books before burning them, selects 16, or more than half, as worthy of salvation (of which more later); if Don Quijote's shouts had not interrupted the process, very little would have been burned.

In only a few cases does the priest give any meaningful justification for his decision to destroy a book, and even then we can see his sense of humor at work. He says of Felixmarte de Hircania that its style is hard and dry, which is meaningful enough, yet quite irrelevant to the book's content, moral or otherwise, and to its potential for contributing to Don Quijote's madness. On the other hand, Olivante de Laura is condemned because of its content, yet it is not clear how the priest would have a romance of chivalry be other than mentiroso, or fictional; in any event, the book may be disparatado, but why does he call it arrogante? His criticism of Feliciano de Silva's works is understandable³⁴⁴, but he illustrates his disapproval with a most unusual image; he would, to be able to destroy these books, burn his father as well, if his father were a knight-errant.

With the remaining books condemned to the flames, except for three pastoral novels and the chivalric romance Platir, which are condemned without explanation, he abandons subtlety and makes a humorous remark, in two cases a pun: such as, that the novel of Gil Polo should be preserved as if it were of Apollo.

Of the books which are saved, many receive their reprieve only with a condition attached. The Diana of Montemayor must undergo major surgery; the Tesoro de varias poesías requires some excisions. Perhaps we are to understand that pages must be ripped out, but I fail to see how Belianís de Grecia could conceivably cure itself, no matter how long a time is allowed. Similarly, humor can be the only reason for ordering all the books about «estas cosas de Francia» to be placed in a dry well, as if they contained something poisonous that could not be allowed indoors (as Belianís can, if no one reads it), nor left on the ground, for fear an animal might eat it.

There is little consistency to be found in the priest's comments, but we can deduce, parenthetically, the following with regard to his literary tastes: first, he has a sense of the history of literature, and will condemn the Amadís for giving the romances of chivalry birth, while pardoning the Diana of Montemayor in part because it started the pastoral novel in Spain. Secondly, the priest likes to see good language. He censures the language of Feliciano de Silva and that of Felixmarte de Hircania, as well as the translations of Ariosto; on the other hand, he commends the language of Palmerín de Inglaterra. Finally, the priest is not much interested in lyric poetry. Not only do Darinel's eclogues displease him, but López Maldonado's could also be a bit shorter; the Diana of Montemayor must have its major verse removed, and the Tesoro de varias poesías is too long, as well as in need of some purification. Even the verses of Cervantes himself do not satisfy him³⁴⁵.

Besides Tirant lo Blanch, there are two other books about which the priest is particularly enthusiastic. His comments on one of them, Palmerín de Inglaterra, have been discussed in an excellent book-length study, that of William E. Purser (Dublin, 1904), and we need not speak of them here; however, his comments on the second, Antonio de Lofrasso's Los diez libros de Fortuna de amor, are very much to the point. If one would still believe that the priest's ambiguous judgments are to be taken as those of Cervantes -that we are to take him seriously when he calls Turpin a true historian and Ariosto a Christian poet- his comments on Lofrasso prove decisively that the books the priest is enthusiastic about would not necessarily receive Cervantes' praise.

I would like to read his comment on Lofrasso:

-Por las órdenes que recibí -dijo el Cura- que desde que Apolo fue Apolo, y las musas musas, y los poetas poetas, tan gracioso ni tan disparatado libro como ése no se ha compuesto, y que, por su camino, es el mejor y el más único de cuantos deste género han salido a la luz del mundo; y el que no le ha leído puede hacer cuenta que no ha leído jamás cosa de gusto. Dádmele acá, compadre; que precio más haberle hallado que si me dieran una sotana de raja de Florencia.

We know what Cervantes' true opinion of Lofrasso was, since in the Viaje del Parnaso, the bitterest of satire is applied to him: it is proposed that he, as the most expendable on the literary boat, be thrown to the waves, to enable the boat to pass between Scylla and Caribdis. It should be no surprise, then, that the priest is enthusiastic about Lofrasso's book not because it is well written, but because it is funny and ridiculous, or, in his words, gracioso and disparatado. This is the sense³⁴⁶ in which it is «el más único de cuantos deste género han salido a la luz del mundo». It is because it is such a bad pastoral novel that the humor-loving priest is going to take it home with him, in order to laugh at it³⁴⁷.

And so we finally arrive at the work which is the focus of our discussion, Tirant lo Blanch, a book which certainly would be no better known than the other romances of chivalry were it not for the passage we are examining. I would like to pause before discussing the priest's statement to mention briefly the most common interpretation of Cervantes' attitude toward the Tirant, that of Menéndez Pelayo. Menéndez Pelayo's position, briefly paraphrased, is that Cervantes realized that the realistic nature of the Tirant was a valuable contribution, but that he felt obliged to censure the book because of its obscenities and licentious scenes. Realism no longer inspires the reverence in the literary world that it did in the preceding century, and I think that modern Cervantine criticism would resist the picture of a Cervantes enamored of realism in its varied forms and opposed to the usual literary modes of his time, which were not realistic in the sense which that word normally has today. Without being able to enter here into an indeed complicated and controversial area, I would merely remind you that while Cervantes wrote La Gitanilla, he also wrote El amante liberal; that while he wrote Rinconete y Cortadillo, he also wrote Las dos doncellas; that he considered his Persiles -scarcely a «realistic» work- superior to his Quijote, and that at the end of his life he was working on Part II of the Galatea, and the Semanas del jardín, which from its title alone must have resembled the idealized world of Boccaccio or of Los cigarrales de Toledo.

With regard to the second part of Cervantes' alleged attitude, that he was censuring the Tirant for its immorality, there is a great deal that could be said. First of all, the Tirant is not a particularly dirty book³⁴⁸, and its «obscenities» are confined to a small section; it seems to me absurd to call it, in the words of Francisco Maldonado, «una apoteosis del erotismo»³⁴⁹, or to say, as Rodríguez Marín does, that «La lozana andaluza, con ser lo que sabemos, no le echa el pie delante más que en una escena»³⁵⁰. Secondly, Cervantes is being quite inconsistent in singling out the Tirant, as various other romances also have licentious elements, which he never mentions³⁵¹. But most important, I think that in the Quijote alone there are too many explicit or implied sexual references for us to accept its author as a Victorian prude, and I mean more than the scabrous episodes associated with the aventura de los batanes (I, 20) and Don Quijote's imprisonment in the cage (I, 48), or the delightful semantic discussion of the term «hideputa» (II, 13). Don Quijote himself calls the office of alcahuete a necessary and important one, and Otis Green feels he speaks for Cervantes³⁵². There are, in Part I, several women whose virtue is open to question (as is Aldonza Lorenzo's; see I, 25) or nonexistent (Maritornes, la Tolosa). Sexual lust is what moves the muleteer to seek Maritornes, bringing on the hilarious scene in the inn; in the equine world, it brings on the adventure with the yangüeses, contributes to Maritornes' trick on Don Quijote, is a concern of the Caballero del Verde Gabán (II, 16), and is the source of the conflict of two of the justice-seekers who appear before Sancho (II, 45). There are explicit, yet casual references to homosexuality in the Historia del Cautivo³⁵³ and in the tale of Ana Félix, Ricote's daughter (II, 63). And beyond this, there are other references of such questionable taste that I hesitate to mention them in public³⁵⁴.

Having said all this, we can return to the priest's statement. The key, to my mind, to understanding this passage is that the priest says the Tirant is full of necedades, idiocies, and by saying «tantas necedades» he makes it clear that he is referring to the details he has just given. In a chivalric context, the book is ridiculous. We see a knight fight with a dog, and an empress in love with a squire; there is also the merry widow, a figure completely alien to the chivalric world, in the person of Reposada, whose sexual desires lead to her suicide. Knights die of old age -a dishonorable death³⁵⁵- taking the precaution of making a will before. Finally, even the names knights have are ridiculous: Kirieleisón de Montalbán, which Cervantes must have understood as a ludicrous attempt to create a Greek-sounding name (like «Polifebo»), such as many other knights in the Spanish romances had, and whose association with the famous Montalbán family was doubly funny, and the knight Fonseca, an insignificant character who could only have caught Cervantes' eye because of his name. Because of its very familiarity, we find nothing noteworthy in the name Fonseca, but it is an unwritten rule of the Spanish romances of chivalry that the characters in them never have Hispanic names, so much so that it would seem a hilarious blooper for one to appear, above all, as a Greek³⁵⁶.

In short, the book is «un tesoro de contento y una mina de pasatiempos» because of details like these which the priest found in it. If it had been Martorell's purpose to write a humorous or farcical book -that is, if he had in fact written these idiocies «de industria»- he would not deserve any punishment. It is because he attempted to write a serious romance of chivalry, and failed so badly, that he should be sent to the galleys.

Of course, this is only the opinion of a country priest of a mediocre education, and is not to be taken literally, or perhaps even figuratively, as expressing Cervantes' true opinion; no doubt Cervantes would not have really sent Martorell to the galleys, any more than he would have really placed the books dealing with the matière de France in a dry well. What should be clear is that there is in this passage no praise of Tirant lo Blanch, on the part of Cervantes³⁵⁷, or of anyone else.