1
WARDROPPER, Bruce, «Don Quixote: Story or History?», MP, LXIII (1965), p. 1.
2
See «Who Read the Romances of Chivalry?» of the present author, forthcoming.
3
MANCINI, Guido, Introduzione al «Palmerín de Olivia», Pisa, 1966, pp. 40-43. There are 15th-century editions of both Pedro del Corral and the Crónica del Cid.
4
All the dates in this paragraph are tentative, but in the case of the Amadís and the Sergas it is almost certain that the editions we have are not the first; however, Bernard König has destroyed the myth of a 1496 edition of the Amadís, in «Amadís und seine Bibliographen», RJ, XIV (1963), pp. 294-309. On the date of composition of the Amadís and the Sergas, see PLACE, Edwin, «Montalvo's Outrageous Recantation», HR, XXXVII (1969), pp. 192-198.
I mention the Caballero Cifar together with the above to emphasize my belief that its publication was not «a testimony to its enduring popularity»
(DEYERMOND, A. and WALKER, R., «A Further Vernacular Source for the Libro de Buen Amor», BHS, XLVI [1969], p. 194, n. 1), but rather a reflection of the sudden demand, which led printers to hunt for suitable works to issue.
5
Edition of Edwin Place, vol. I, Madrid, 1959, pp. 3-9 and 11.
6
See also the comment on the «malos escritores» quoted below. Although he has not the slightest idea who wrote the book, he does believe that it was the work of more than one person, an interesting detail.
7
Frida Weber de Kurlat studies this aspect from a different point of view in «Estructura novelesca del Amadís de Gaula», Revista de literaturas modernas, V (1966), pp. 29-54, as did previously Raymond Willis, in The Phantom Chapters of the «Quixote», New York, 1953.
8
Edición citada, p. 9, ll. 85-94.
9
P. 403 of the edition of Pascual de Gayangos, in BAE, XL, which remains the only one. It should be noted that Montalvo felt necessary to speak of the continuation with a metaphor, no doubt because of the novelty of the concept.
10
The eastern Mediterranean was the usual setting of all the later romances of chivalry, so the term «ciclo greco-asiático» of Gayangos is not particularly useful. For Montalvo's precedents, see STEGAGNO PICCHIO, L., «Fortuna iberica di un topos letterario: la corte di Costantinopoli dal Cligès al Palmerín de Olivia», in Studi sul Palmerín de Olivia. III. Saggi e richerche, Pisa, 1966, pp. 99-136.