142 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



deron, the two Castilians whose reputation is world-wide, represent 

 the novel and the drama. 



In the days when the Spanish monarchy was the greatest of 

 world-powers, there were likewise two divisions of the novel in which 

 Spain set the fashion for the world:' the romance of chivalry and 

 the picaresque tale, or "romance of roguery." Amadis of Gaul (or 

 "of Wales," as it seems this hero should be called), who was the pro- 

 totype of wandering cavaliers, issued from darkness somewhere in 

 the fourteenth century. His innumerable progeny reached down to 

 the time of Don Quijote, at once the perpetuator and the queller of 

 all knights errant. The other and parallel current of fiction was 

 equally old. That mischievous cleric, the Archpriest of Hita, writing 

 about 1350, created characters similar to some later rogues of litera- 

 ture. The famous novel in dialogue form, known as the Comedia 

 de Calisto y Melihea, published about 1500, contains picaresque 

 elements of great force. Then came the first real novel of low life, 

 La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes {ca. 1550), followed by Mateo Ale- 

 man's Guzman de Alfarache, and numerous other romances of the 

 same class. Cervantes, who was interested in all strata of society, 

 wrote some frankly picaresque short stories besides his long novels. 



The first half of the seventeenth century saw the publication of 

 a great many novelas, called ejemplares, after the fashion of Cer- 

 vantes, and usually anything but exemplary in contents. After 

 that there was a gap of 150 years before Spain again entered the 

 field of the novel. The entire eighteenth century is barren of prose 

 fiction, at least of examples sufficiently important to find their way 

 into the histories of hterature. With the exception of this gap the 

 Spanish novel has a history stretching from the Middle Ages to the 

 twentieth century, and it displays few foreign elements. Almost 

 all its valuable characteristics are native to Spain. 



In France a wholly different condition will be found. Notwith- 

 standing the high reputation that the French novel enjoys, it appears 

 upon analysis to be the offspring of European currents of thought, 

 or, in many cases, of direct foreign influence. The continuous devel- 



■ The pastoral flourished also for about loo years, but it originated in Italy. 



