La conclusión del Amadís de Gaula: Las sergas de Esplandián de Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo

The Amadís de Gaula, the most important of all Spanish chivalric texts, has been known to readers through the recasting of Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, who also penned his own (for the most part) conclusion to the work, the Sergas de Esplandián. While the intentions of the original Amadís may have been quite different from those of Montalvo, he adopted and adapted it as part of an overall plan. In this study González takes side with those scholars who have argued that both works must be read as part of the same roman fleuve in order to ascertain what this plan was. The author probes deeply into Montalvo’s efforts to sustain the interest of his reader while adhering to the narrative model of the Amadís. González’s analysis of the Sergas leads him to a thorough examination of its literary techniques, plot construction, the moralizing interspersed throughout the text, and the functions of main and secondary characters, including the auctor, Montalvo’s fictional alter-ego.