Medieval Iberian Romance

doi:10.1017/9781108783033.013

11 - Medieval Iberian Romance

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2023

David A. Wacks

Edited by

Roberta L. Krueger

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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

Zifar Blaquerna Amadís Tirant King Arthur Ziyad ibn Amir al-Kinani Andalusian Literature medieval Hebrew romance Curial e Güelfa Jacob Ben Elazar

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance , pp. 167 - 179

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108783033.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

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References

Suggestions for Further Reading

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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

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