Amadís de Gaula, Libro primero

"Los cuatro libros del invencible caballero Amadís de Gaula en que se tratan sus muy altos hechos de armas y apacibles caballerías. Libro primero." Edited by Jesús Botello and Cristina Guardiola-Griffiths. It would be difficult to exaggerate the popularity and diffusion that books of chivalry had in Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. Authentic Golden Age ‘best-sellers’, these works were read (or listened to) by all social classes, from aristocrats and kings down to peasants without any formal education at all, a fact that is evidenced by the numerous preserved testimonies that speak of their enormous popularity. With regard to Amadís de Gaula, although it was not the first chivalric book published in Spain, it was the one with the most number of editions (at least 19 in Spanish, including the Zaragoza edition of 1508 and the Seville edition of 1586) and as such it established the literary paradigm upon which the genre was built in Spain and throughout Europe. Its subject soon inspir