Giráldez, Susan. “Las Sergas de Esplandián” y la España de los Reyes Católicos. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. Pp. 113 (Surtz).

Summary

This monograph purports to insert Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo's continuation of his medieval Amadís de Gaula (1508), the Sergas de Esplandián (published 1510), into its context, the Spain of the Catholic Monarchs. The Sergas (exploits) discusses a transformation of the hero from the model of Amadís, the solitary knight who engages in single combat for his own glory, into the new model of Esplandián, the caballero who fights in collective combats to defend and expand Christendom. This change is reflected in turn in the structure of the Sergas, which largely eschews the pattern of interlacing characteristic of Amadís de Gaula. Such transformations are related to the religious politics of the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella, and, concretely, to the Granadan campaign and the subsequent conquests in North Africa. For those familiar with the bibliography on the subject, this change is not a novel concept. However, without breaking new ground and despite its repetitiveness and considerable naiveté, Giráldez's book is moderately successful in bringing together useful information about the Sergas and its times.

While many scholars eventually publish their doctoral dissertations as a book, time seems to have stood still for Professor Giráldez, for although she received her degree in 1992, her bibliography contains but a single item in print after that date. Meanwhile, scholarship on literary aspects of the Sergas has produced a number of studies; moreover, the question of the ideological underpinnings of the monarchy of Ferdinand and Isabella and of royal use of propaganda to uphold that state has attracted considerable interest over the last ten years. I am thinking, for example, of José Manuel Nieto Soria's Fundamentos ideológicos del poder real en Castilla (Madrid: EUDEMA, 1988) and the collection of essays Soria edited, Orígenes de la monarchía hispánica: propaganda y legitimación (c. 1400–1520) (Madrid: Dykinson, 1999). Likewise, the messianic aura surrounding Ferdinand the Catholic's intention to reconquer the Holy Land has received fresh attention in such monographs as Eulàlia Duran and Joan Requesens's Profecia i poder al Renaixement: texts profètics favorables a Ferran et Catòlic (Valencia: Eliseu Climent, 1997). It is regrettable that Giráldez has missed the opportunity to dialogue with more recent critical studies.