The White Knight: Tirant Lo Blanc | Page 3

formal challenges and replies...; dramatic lamentations; long and fervent prayers; and allusions to classical Latin authors, to biblical characters and to figures prominent in medieval literature." He goes on to say that if the novelist had omitted many of these elements, "his book would in that case have been reduced to approximately one-fourth of its present size, but quite probably it would now be considered a masterpiece of narration and dialogue."(3)
Such has been the aim of this translation: The story line has been slightly abridged, but the most dramatic change is that most of the rhetoric has been eliminated. If the reader's literary palate is tickled by this version, and if he would like to read the entire manuscript in English, he is referred to the version by David Rosenthal or to the even more complete translation by Ray La Fontaine.(4)
Who was the author of this spicy, brutally realistic novel of kings and knights of the fifteenth century? We know that Joanot Martorell, son of the king's chamberlain, Francesc Martorell, was born in Valencia in about 1413. He lived in England during the years 1438 and 1439, and also traveled to Naples. Death came to him in 1468. During his life he wrote several letters of combat, and he began to write his novel Tirant lo Blanc in about 1460. Whether or not he actually finished the book is still a matter of debate, for it was not published during his lifetime. Another writer, Marti Joan de Galba, adds his name as a second author, and says that he wrote the last one-fourth of the book. But he died six months before it was published, and his contribution, if any, is questionable.
And what was the success of this novel? Only 715 copies were printed on its initial run in 1490, and apparently all were sold. A second edition did not appear until 1497. An abridged translation into Spanish was finally produced in 1511, and no further Spanish editions appeared until the 20th century.(5) It was translated into Italian in the 16th century, into French in the 17th century, and finally into English late in the 20th century.
Of interest is the fact that soon after the appearance of Tirant lo Blanc, and throughout the 16th century, Spain was flooded with novels of chivalry. But these were of quite a different nature. Although the major characters are also knights highly instilled with the code of chivalry, they become involved in fantastic adventures filled with dragons, enchanters, and the like, following the lead of the French romances that were translated into Spanish beginning in the 13th century. These Spanish novels of chivalry were produced in such great numbers and read so widely that no less than Spain's great mystic, Saint Teresa of Avila, was for a time a voracious reader of them.
While Tirant lo Blanc had no literary followers until Cervantes more than one hundred years later, it does have the honor of being "the earliest existing romance of chivalry printed in the Peninsula."(6) This being so, from where did Joanot Martorell receive his inspiration? Although Professor Henry Thomas notes that "the tracing of sources...(may be only) one degree higher than the hunting of cats,"(7) we feel impelled to relate some of the more important discoveries of literary scholarship. The first section of the book is in imitation of an English romance, "Guy of Warwick", in which England fights off a Danish invasion. When Tirant lo Blanc appears for the first time, asleep on his horse, and stumbles upon the hermit who explains at great length the order of chivalry, the entire section (which this present translation omits) is taken from Ramon Lull's Libre del Orde d'Cauayleria.(8) Tirant himself may be an amalgamation of several historical figures: Roger de Flor, Richard Beauchamp, Louis IX, Peter II of Aragon, Joan Hunyadi lo Blanch of Hungary, etc. Tirant's adventures in Africa closely parallel many people, events and place names from Ramon Muntaner's Chronica.(9)
More important than any of these "sources", however, is this question: What did Martorell do with the material that came to him from books, from life, and from his imagination?
Cervantes, writing more than one hundred years after Tirant lo Blanc was published, was sufficiently impressed to talk about it in his Don Quixote not once, but on two separate occasions, in fairly glowing terms.(10) Furthermore, some readers have pointed out scenes that appear to be similar in both books: both Philippe and Don Quixote find holes in their stockings, which leads one into great searching for a lost needle, and the other into even deeper depression; there is a cat-howling episode in both books, etc. And there is one other way that Tirant lo Blanc points the way toward the Quixote: in the framework. Cervantes uses a device often found in the novels