This chapter analyzes Arthurian references in Galician-Portuguese poetry, attempting to reconstruct the concept of the Arthurian world as imagined by Iberian poets.

The Matter of Britain had a profound influence on the development of Portuguese literature. It can be said that Portuguese literary prose began with the translation of French romances, mainly those belonging to the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal, into Galician-Portuguese. The estimated date for these translations is the second half of the thirteenth century, assuming that King Afonso III of Portugal brought the fashion and the original romances from Burgundy, on his return to Portugal to claim the throne from his brother Sancho II, in 1345. Narrative strategies inherited from the Arthurian romances in translation were adopted by Fernão Lopes, the father of Portuguese historiography, as late as the mid-fifteenth century in his Crónica de D. Fernando and Crónica de D. João I.

The earliest presence of Arthurian characters and themes in Galician-Portuguese literature, however, is to be found in the poetry of the cancioneiros. These are collections of poetical compositions produced by Iberian poets: jograls, troubadours, members of the nobility, even kings. The Cancioneiro da Ajuda, Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional, and Cancioneiro da Vaticana are the most comprehensive repositories of Galician-Portuguese lay poetry, although there are other extant shorter collections attributed to individual authors, as well as loose manuscript pages. To these must be added a fourth major cancioneiro, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, compiled by Alfonso X, king of León and Castile.