From Guinevere to Isabel: Rodríguez de Montalvo’s Transformations of Oriana in Amadís de Gaula

The 1508 romance of chivalry Amadís de Gaula provides some of the best evidence for the transmission of Arthurian legend to the Iberian Peninsula. Though Guiraut de Cabrera references the matter of Britain as essential repertoire for jongleurs in 1170, many scholars consider the Iberian Peninsula “an Arthurian backwater”, to borrow Michael Harney’s term (Lida de Malkiel, “Arthurian Literature” 405; Harney, “Spanish Lancelot” 188). Two partial translations of the prose Lancelot survive in Iberian languages: the sixteenth century Castilian Lanzarote del Lago, a manuscript copy of a 1414 codex, and a shorter, unrelated manuscript fragment in Catalán (Contreras Martín and Sharrer xii). The story of Lancelot is also preserved in references in other texts.¹ For example, the popular Lancelot ballad “Nunca fuera caballero de damas tan bien servido”, which Don Quijote mentions in his discussion of Lancelot and Guinevere, dates to the fourteenth century and survives in four sixteenth-century variants (Contreras Martín and Sharrer xi; Sharrer 180–81). Carlos Alvar notes that two Lancelot ballads were sung at the court of the Reyes Católicos (“Materia de Bretaña” 43). Amadís, a belated Arthurian text, imitates the plotline of the French Lancelot en prose but rewrites its love triangle, substituting juvenile disobedience for adultery. This change has prompted scholars to classify the Amadís’s values as bourgeois or “middle class” (Entwistle 216). Michael Harney, citing Fogelquist, explains that “[t]he shift in the locus of control over the female converts the triangle of the jealous husband (Arthur), his wife (Guinevere), and her lover (Lancelot), into that of the domineering father (Lisuarte), his daughter (Oriana), and her suitor (Amadís)” (“Spanish Lancelot” 192; Fogelquist 103). Edwin Williamson argues that the purpose of the revision is moral, as the Amadís participates in a “Christianizing process” typical of both the French Post-Vulgate and the Iberian tradition (39).

While these readings are all valid, they do not tell the whole story. In this article, I contend that the transformation of the mal mariée into the rebellious daughter also has political implications. Peggy McCracken, referencing medieval French romance, notes that stories of adulterous queens “respond, sometimes indirectly, to issues raised by the evolving shape of queenship during the period of their production: the role of the queen in government, the importance of childbirth and succession in the royal family, and the importance of the queen’s chastity in the rituals and symbolic structures of the royal court” (Romance of Adultery 15). Oriana’s sexual transgressions, though they fall short of adultery, leave her vulnerable to criticism as her political power increases, as is often the case in the romances McCracken studies (Romance of Adultery 26; “Queen’s Secret” 289–90). Montalvo, in his 1508 revision of Amadís, redeems the sinful princess through marriage to Amadís in order to legitimate the political power that the two share as the co-rulers of Britain and Gaul. Oriana evokes at certain moments the image of Isabel, and the chivalric dual monarchy provides a fictional echo for the kingdom of the Reyes Católicos.

Imitation of Isabel

Though she differs from Isabel in her sentimental life, Montalvo’s Oriana comes to resemble the monarch of Castilla in her role as heiress to the throne of Britain. Montalvo’s topical references reveal that he revised Amadís during the last decades of the fifteenth century and likely concluded it around the time of the conquest of Granada (Avalle-Arce 133). Barbara Weissberger asserts that the depiction of female characters during Isabel’s reign is “deeply affected by the presence on the throne of an absolutist monarch who is also a woman” (xiv). Isabel ruled Castilla from 1474 to her death in 1504, and her frequent travels made her a familiar public figure. Montalvo was a regidor of Medina del Campo and thus on the periphery of Isabeline bureaucracy. According to Frank Pierce, “Medina del Campo was a place especially favored by Isabella and her husband (the queen died there in 1504...