Montalvo, Martorell, Cervantes and the Structure of Romance in Renaissance Spain

The primary objective of this dissertation is to examine the romance form that serves as the organizing
principle in Amadís de Gaula, Tirante el Blanco, and Don Quijote de la Mancha. These texts, spanning the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, offer fertile ground for the study of the innovations and continuities of the romance genre in the context of medieval and Renaissance Spain. Particular attention is given to the narrative structure, or design, of the works and specifically, to structural affinities between the romances, which exist despite obvious cultural differences in their respective time periods and regions of origin.
Chapter I defines the parameters of the chivalric romance paradigm and focuses the analysis on the Hispano-Arthurian tradition in Spain. Chapter II offers a detailed study of the providential world of the sixteenth-century Amadís de Gaula while Chapter III concentrates on the tenuous balance of romance and realism in Tirante el blanco. Last, the epilogue presents multiple examples of Cervantes' indebtedness to his romance precursors.