Amadis of Gaul, Books III and IV (Studies in Romance Languages) Book

More specific ratings:

Historical importance: 5 stars
Translation: 5 stars
Pleasure of reading: 2.5 stars

After reading Books I and II of the "Amadis Cycle," I found this latter half more of a chore than the first. It has its compelling moments, but overall it's slower and more overly wordy than Books I or II, and the formulaic nature of it was bound to get tired by page 1,000 and beyond (the whole thing is about 1,400 pages).

This latter half of the exploits of fictional knight errant Amadis of Gaul mostly continues the pattern of the first half: Amadis rides into battles, bound by his unfailing sense of honor and duty, and wins. And wins. And wins. And he always takes the high road, never shows up those he defeats, and is the ultimate model for chivalric behavior, and is an all-around swell guy.

He's also extremely boring, in terms of character. I get it - that's not really the point of this kind of tale. Books like Amadis of Gaul and Tirant lo Blanc seem to have had a very different place in their day than modern, popular fiction tales do. In one sense, though, I feel like Amadis of Gaul may be an early example of the very formula that we still see if popular TV and fiction writing series to this very day. A hero gets into a fight for a noble cause, maybe struggles a bit, but ultimately wins the day. Rinse, wash, repeat. That's what super knight Amadis of Gaul does, again and again. In fact, it becomes such a predictable formula that the only thing that kind of spiced it up in Books III and IV were two things: the large-scale battle against former liege lord King Lisuarte, and the battle against the demon-like creature Endriago. Those were really the only two situations which offered something a bit different, in terms of villains to be conquered. Book IV is especially slow, with far fewer battles and a lot more dialogue and exposition about what people were doing, how honorable they were, or what they would be doing next. Honestly, there were moments where I would zone out for entire half or whole pages, lock back in, and realize that I hadn't missed a single thing of import to the story or character development (not that there's much character development in these books - nearly every character kind of is who they are, and they almost never change).

The translation does seem to be an excellent one. Not that I know Portuguese or could possible read the original, but just in terms of modern readability, I found it really good. I actually gave up on a few other older pieces of literature because of overly clunky translations, such as Pearl S. Buck's translation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Not so with Amadis, which seems to retain the fell of early 16th century prose while being accessible to modern readers.

What I realized after completing the entire, epic series is just how much literature would change over the succeeding centuries. Two givens in modern fiction writing are: (1) make your characters distinctive in speech and/or physical appearance, especially if you have a ton of characters in your story, and (2) main characters have to change over the course of the story, for better or worse. I found there to be almost none of these things in Amadis of Gaul. We never get any physical descriptions of the literally hundreds of characters in the tale, with the rare exceptions being to give vague descriptions of Amadis, Esplandian, and maybe a handful of others. On top of that, every character speaks in the same elevated, highly formal register at all times. I know, I know - this was before colloquial speech became any regular part of fiction writing, and it is very noticeable. One could chalk it up to the fact that the entire work is basically one of fantasy, but it doesn't make it any easier to read or get any sense of authenticity from the characters as resembling real people.

So I made it through the book, but it certainly felt more like homework by those last 300 or 400 pages. Overall, I'm glad I read it, since it laid the groundwork for so many great pieces of later writing, and it's not without its fun, gripping moments. But I would caution those who are thinking about it to be prepared for some duller, meandering passages by the time you get to Book IV.