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11 - Medieval Iberian Romance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2023

By
David A. Wacks
Edited by
Roberta L. Krueger
Roberta L. Krueger
Affiliation:
Hamilton College, New York
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Summary

The story of the medieval Romance on the Iberian Peninsula is a bit more complicated than that we read in traditional histories of Spanish or Catalan literature. Hebrew and Arabic authors also wrote texts that could be classified as romances some years before the Castilian Grail and Amadís. These authors adapted the motifs of Arthurian or chivalric romance, combining them with the literary tropes and conventions familiar to them from Hebrew and Arabic traditions. Others, such as the anonymous author of Cavallero Zifar (Castilian, anonymous, ca. 1300) and Ramon Llull in his ecclesisastical Romance, Blaquerna (Catalan), transform the conventions of romance to suit their own ecclesiastical and spiritual purposes. In this way, if we imagine romance in Iberia less as a stable genre with a canon and more as a set of conventions and tropes that authors recombined in novel ways, we see it as a literary practice that crosses languages and religious groups, but that in some ways shares chivalric and literary values across these differences.

Keywords

ZifarBlaquernaAmadísTirantKing ArthurZiyad ibn Amir al-KinaniAndalusian Literaturemedieval Hebrew romanceCurial e GüelfaJacob Ben Elazar
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance , pp. 167 - 179
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Suggestions for Further Reading

Brownlee, Kevin, and Brownlee, Marina Scordilis, eds. Romance: Generic Transformation from Chrétien de Troyes to Cervantes. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1985.Google Scholar
González, Cristina. El cavallero Zifar y el reino lejano. Madrid, España: Editorial Gredos, 1984.Google Scholar
González, Cristina La tercera crónica de Alfonso X, La gran conquista de ultramar. London: Támesis, 1992.Google Scholar
Hook, David, ed. The Arthur of the Iberians: The Arthurian Legends in the Spanish and Portuguese Worlds. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Martorell, Joanot, and de Galba, Martí Joan. Tirant Lo Blanch. Translated by David H. Rosenthal. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Robinson, Cynthia. Medieval Andalusian Courtly Culture in the Mediterranean: Hadith Bayad Wa-Riyad. London: Routledge, 2007.Google Scholar
Rodríguez de Montalvo, Garci. Amadis of Gaul: A Novel of Chivalry of the 14th Century Presumably First Written in Spanish. Translated by Edwin B Place and Herbert C Behm. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1974.Google Scholar
Rodríguez de Montalvo, Garci The Labors of the Very Brave Knight Esplandián. Translated by William Thomas Little. Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1992.Google Scholar
Scordilis Brownlee, Marina. “Romance at the Crossroads: Medieval Spanish Paradigms and Cervantine Revisions.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance. Ed. Roberta l. Krueger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. pp. 253–66.Google Scholar
Terry, Arthur, ed. Tirant lo Blanc: New Approaches. London: Támesis, 1999.Google Scholar
Wacks, David. Medieval Iberian Crusade Fiction and the Mediterranean World. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Max, trans. Curial and Guelfa: a classic of the Crown of Aragon. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co., 2011.Google Scholar

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