ABSTRACT
T HE method of treating these romances in groups has somewhat obscured the extent to which they over-ran the world of letters at a time when fiction was not reproduced with the present-day rapidity. A few words will suffice to make their position clear. During the hundred years following the publication of Amadis of Gaul, some fifty new chivalresque romances appeared in Spain and Portugal. They were published at an average rate of almost one a year between 1508 and IS 50; nine were added between IS 50 and the year of the Armada; only three more came out before the publication of Don Quixote l . To form an adequate idea of
the number of these books in circulation, it must further be borne in mind that most of the romances were reprinted, some of them many times, especially previous to the Armada. Moreover, along with the native romances, there circulated new translations of French romances, besides reprints of some of those already mentioned as having been published in the fifteenth century. Thus, down to a quarter of a century after the publication of Amadis of Gaul, there appeared in Spain the following romances of the Celtic cycle: Tristan de Leonis, ISO I; Tablante y Jofre, IS I 3, and La Demanda del SanClo Grial, con los maravillosos fechos de Lanzarote y de Galaz, 1515; and of the Charlemagne cycle: Renaldos de Montalvan, 1523, Historia del Emperador Carlo Magno, 1525, Espejo de Cavallerias and Morgante y Roldan, 1533. These too were several times reprinted 1.
