Luis Murillo, in The Golden Dial (Oxford: Dolphin, 1975), pp. 72-117, provides the most recent discussion of chronology of composition of the Quijote, pointing out that none of the books mentioned in the «escrutinio de la librería» was published later than 1591. I have also discussed the topic of the date of composition of the Quijote (Part II), in «El rucio de Sancho y la fecha de composición de la Segunda Parte de Don Quijote», NRFH, 25 (1976), 94-102; the revised English original was published in Studies in the Spanish Golden Age: Cervantes and Lope (Miami: Universal, 1977), 21-32.
The historian Diego de Colmenares had a copy of Amadís (see infra, n. 245). The Mexican Melchor Pérez de Soto, born in 1606, had a large collection of romances; see Donald G. Castanien, «The Mexican Inquisition Censors a Private Library, 1655», Hispanic American Historical Review, 34 (1954), 374-92. Irving Leonard, Baroque Times in Old Mexico (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966; first published in 1959), p. 94, summarizes as follows: «Cervantes' great masterpiece -which is also absent in this inventory- had allegedly given the coup de grâce in 1605 to the protracted vogue of the romances of chivalry. This assumption, enjoying something of the sanctity of dogma, receives a disconcerting jar as the eye roves over this book list of half a century later». Pérez owned copies of Amadís, Lisuarte de Grecia, Amadís de Grecia, Florisel de Niquea, Palmerín de Oliva, Palmerín de Inglaterra, Belianís, Lepolemo, and the Caballero Peregrino (see note 135 above). The Inquisition did not censor any of the literary works (Castanien, p. 388).
Leonard, Baroque Times, p. 120.
Ed. Miguel Romera-Navarro, II (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1939), 35-36.
Leonard, Baroque Times, p. 120; Thomas, p. 179; Rodríguez Marín, «El Quijote y Don Quijote en América», pp. 118, 129-37; «Relación de la fiesta que la insigne Universidad de Baeza celebró a la inmaculada Concepción (Baeza, 1618)», in Gallardo, II, cots. 182-83.
Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, II, 133: «novum Amadisio de grege heroem ridiculum configens».
The comments of Mateo Alemán and Gracián recently referred to suggest that in the seventeenth century, the reading public of the romances included persons of lower social class than previously.
Ensayo sobre la literatura de cordel (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1969), pp. 317-31. The romances discussed by Caro, however, are generally not the ones being discussed in this book.
Besides the references given in my edition of the Espejo de príncipes, I, lxxiv, note 107, we can mention Libro de caballerías, of Juan Perucho (Barcelona: Taber, 1968). See also the addition of Julio Rodríguez-Puértolas to note 33, pp. 110-11 of El pensamiento de Cervantes.
Thomas and Menéndez Pelayo offer only brief summaries. Fuller ones are found in Gayangos' «Discurso preliminar»; for Palmerín de Olivia, Primaleón, and Palmerín de Inglaterra see Patchell, pp. 129-33. Some summaries may also be found in John Dunlop's History of Prose Fiction, ed. Henry Wilson (London: George Bell, 1896), I, 351-413. Pierce provides a detailed summary of Amadís in his Amadís de Gaula, pp. 27-36.