ABSTRACT
During the great classic era imaginative literature in prose took three chief forms, if we leave out of account the Romances of Chivalry, which reached their apogee in the preceding era and continued to be produced well toward 1600. The first of the three is the pastoral novel, the continuation of the Diana tradition. The second, much less abundant, the Moorish novel, borrowed its themes from the warfare, deliberately poetized, between Moors and Christians. The third, the most original as well as the richest, includes all the novels which aimed to depict manners in a more or less realistic fashion. There were many sequels to Montemayor's Diana, but only one is worthy of the model: La Diana enamorada of the Valencian Gaspar Gil Polo. The Salamancan doctor Alonso Perez, a friend of Montemayor, published La Segunda Parte de la Diana.
