AMADIS DE GAULA. This famous romance of chivalry survives only in a Castilian text, but it is claimed by Portugal as well as by Spain. The date of its composition, the name of its author, and the language in which it was originally written are not yet settled. It is not even certain when the romance was first printed, for though the oldest known edition (a unique copy of which is in the British Museum) appeared at Sargasso in 1508, it is highly probable that Amadis was in print before this date ; an edition is reported to have been issued at Seville in 1496. As it exists in Spanish, Amadis de Gaula consists of four books, the last of which is generally believed to be by the regidor of Medina del Campo, Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo. Montalvo alleges that the first three books were arranged and corrected by him from "the ancient originals," and a reference in the prologue to the siege of Granada points to the conclusion that the Spanish recast was made shortly after 1492 ; it is possible, however, that the pro logue alone was written after 1492, and that the text itself is older. The number of these "ancient originals" is not stated, nor is there any mention of the language in which they were com posed ; Montalvo's silence on the latter point might be taken to imply that they were in Castilian, but any such inference would be hazardous. Three books of Amadis de Gaula are mentioned by Pero Ferrus who was living in 1379, and there is evidence that the romance was current in Castile more than a quarter of a century earlier; but again there is no information as to the language in which they were written. Gomes Eannes de Azurara in his Chronica de Conde D. Pedro de Menezes (c. 1450) states that Amadis de Gaula was written by Vasco de Lobeira in the time of King Ferdinand of Portugal who died in 1383. Recent critics have inclined to the belief that Amadis de Gaula was written by Joao de Lobeira, a Galician knight who frequented the Portuguese court between 1258 and 1285, and to whom are ascribed two fragments of a poem in the Colocci-Brancuti (Can zoniere (Nos. 24o and 240b), which reappears with some unim portant variants in Amadis de Gaula (book ii., chapter 2). The coincidence may be held to account in some measure for the traditional association of a Lobeira with the authorship of Amadis de Gaula; but, though curious, it warrants no definite conclusion being drawn from it. Against the Portuguese claim it is argued that the Villancico corresponding to Joao de Lobeira's poem is an interpolation in the Spanish text, that Portuguese prose was in a rudimentary stage of development at the period when—ex hypothesi—the romance was composed, and that the book was very popular in Spain almost a century before it is even men tioned in Portugal. Lastly, there is the incontrovertible fact that Amadis de Gaula exists in Castilian, while it remains to be proved that it ever existed in Portuguese. As to its substance, it is beyond dispute that much of the text derives from the French romances of the Round Table; but the evidence does not enable us to say (I) whether it was pieced together from various French ro mances; (2) whether it was more or less literally translated from a lost French original; or (3) whether the first Peninsular adapter or translator was a Castilian or a Portuguese. On these points judgment must be suspended. There can, however, be no hesi tation in accepting Cervantes' verdict on Amadis de Gaula as the "best of all the books of this kind that have ever been written." It is the prose epic of feudalism, and its romantic spirit, its high ideals, its fantastic gallantry, its ingenious adventures, its mecha nism of symbolic wonders, and its flowing style have entranced readers of such various types as Francis I. and Charles V., Ariosto and Montaigne.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Eugene Baret, De l'Amadis de Gaule et de son Bibliography.-Eugene Baret, De l'Amadis de Gaule et de son influence sur les moeurs et la litterature au XVIe et an XVIIe siecle (1873) ; Theophilo Braga, Historia das novelas portuguezas de caval leria (Porto, 1873), Curso de litteratura e arte portugueza 088r), and Questoes de litteratura e arte portugueza (1885) ; Ludwig Braun fels, Kritischer Versuch uber den Roman Amadis von Gallien (Leipzig, 1876) ; Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos and Gottfried Baist in the Grundriss der romanischen Philologie (Strasbourg, 1897), ii. Band 2. Abteilung, pp. 216-226 and ; 0 romance de Amadis, por A. L. Vieira (Lisbon, 1926) .