Novel
Amadis of Gaul
Amadís de Gaula
Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo · 1508
Synopsis
From the secret love of King Perión of Gaul and Princess Elisena is born a child whom his mother, to hide her fault, entrusts to the waves in an ark. Taken in by the knight Gandales, who raises him in Scotland without knowing who he is, the Child of the Sea becomes Amadis. At the Scottish court, he falls in love with Oriana, daughter of King Lisuarte of Great Britain, and vows her absolute fidelity. Knighted by his own father without either knowing it, protected by the sorceress Urganda the Unrecognised and pursued by the enchanter Arcaláus, he goes from adventure to adventure.
Context
The story circulated in three books as early as the fourteenth century, and its first author remains unknown; Portuguese attributions have been put forward. Montalvo says he corrected these three books and added a fourth; fragments of a fifteenth-century manuscript show that he also abridged the older text. The oldest surviving edition is that of Zaragoza, in 1508, and earlier lost editions are supposed. He later gave a sequel, Las sergas de Esplandián. In France, the translation by Nicolas de Herberay des Essarts has been reissued since 2006.
Who it is for
A long chivalric romance in four books, made up of trials that echo one another; one has to accept repetition, the law of the genre.
Prizes and reception
One of the most famous books of chivalry, a genre that enjoyed an immense vogue in the sixteenth century; it was translated very early into much of Europe.