El Caballero Cifar is the earliest full-length indigenous chivalric ROMANCE in Spanish, written
in Castilian prose in about the year 1300. While
its author is anonymous, he was clearly familiar
with the LAIS of MARIE DE FRANCE and with the romances of CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES, and possibly with
the prose romances of the 13th-century French
VULGATE CYCLE as well. Evidence suggests that the
author may have been a cleric, and some scholars
have suggested Ferrán Martínz, archdeacon of
Madrid, as a possible author, but such conjectures
are impossible to prove. The romance survives in
two extant manuscripts, one preserved in Madrid
at the National Library of Spain, the other in
Paris at the National Library of France. An early
printed version, published at Seville in 1512, is
also extant.
The structure of the Caballero Cifar is rambling
and, by modern standards, somewhat incoherent.
It has been compared to the loose narrative style of
late Greek or Byzantine tales. The plot follows the
adventures of the knight Cifar and his wife, Grima,
as well as the later chivalric adventures of his sons
Garfín and Roboán. These, along with an episode
concerning the Lady of the Lake, suggest the influence of the popular romances of King ARTHUR. In
addition, the text combines a secularized adaptation of the life of St. Eustache, other popular tales,
and didactic matter and exempla.
The most admired and discussed character in
the Caballero Cifar is the peasant squire of Cifar’s
son Roboán, known as El Ribaldo. The last part of
the romance focuses chiefly on the adventures of
Roboán and his squire, and scholars have seen in El
Ribaldo a predecessor of the picaresque hero of
later, Golden Age Spanish literature—embodying a
sort of realism uncharacteristic of most chivalric
literature. Also, in El Ribaldo scholars have seen the
original forerunner of Cervantes’s immortal Sancho Panza.
Bibliography
Burke, James F. History and Vision: The Figural Structure of the Libro del Cavallero Zifar. London:
Tamesis, 1972.
Nelson, Charles L., trans. The Book of the Knight Zifar.
Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1983.
Olsen, Marilyn A., ed. Libro del Cauallero Çifar. Madison, Wisc.: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1984.
Walker, Roger M. Tradition and Technique in El libro
del Cavellaro Zifar. London: Tamesis, 1974.
Webber, E. J. “The Ribaldo as Literary Symbol.” In
Florilegium Hispanicum, edited by John S. Geary
131–138, Madison, Wisc.: Hispanic Seminary of
Medieval Studies, 1983.