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Las sergas de Esplandin
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Wikipedia article
'Las Sergas de Esplandin' ('The Adventures of Esplandin') is a novel written by Garci Rodrguez de Montalvo in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. The novel is a sequel to a popular fifteenth century set of chivalric romance novels, 'Amads de Gaula'. While the novel itself has met with some criticism for its lack of literary style, it achieved particular notability in 1862, when Edward Everett Hale concluded that the novel was the origin of the name California.
History
Garci Rodrguez de Montalvo initially translated and recast 'Amads de Gaula' from Portuguese to Spanish. The original 'Amadis' was in three volumes, but Montalvo added a fourth that is considered to be mostly his own work. Upon completion, Montalvo wrote the sequel, 'Las Sergas de Esplandin', regarding the exploits of Esplandin, the son of Amadis. The oldest known surviving edition of this work was published in Seville in July 1510. Earlier editions are thought to have been published in Seville as early as 1496. Ruth Putnam argues that Montalvo finished his novel sometime after 1492, but before Queen Isabella died in 1504. Montalvo is thought to have died in 1505, leaving some of his works to be published after his death.
In the sixth chapter of 'Don Quixote', written by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605, Montalvo's sequel is mentioned as one of the books in Quixote's library. When Quixote's niece, the housekeeper, and the parish curate set out to destroy Quixote's library, considered the source of Quixote's fanciful behavior, 'Las Sergas de Esplandin' is the first book selected for the pyre.
California
Chivalric novels were popular at the time the Spanish empire was beginning to explore the New World. Such novels were a mix of truth, lore, and fiction, but with little clarity as to where each aspect of the novels fell. The explorers used the novels as a source of inspiration, while the authors of the novels, in turn, used the reports of new explorations to embellish their tales., Polk, Chapter 1.
The 'Esplandin' novel describes a fictional island named California, (The first mention of "California" occurs on the unnumbered page after page CVIII, in the right column.) inhabited only by black women, ruled by Queen Calafia, and east of the Indies. When Spanish explorers, under the command of Hernn Corts, learned of an island off the coast of Western Mexico, and rumored to be ruled by Amazon women, they named it California. Believing the Pacific Ocean, then called the South Sea, was much smaller than it turned out to be, the island seemed to precisely be east of the Indies just as the island of California was described in Montalvo's novel. Once the island was determined to be a peninsula, the name California had already been adopted, and the "island" eventually became known as the Baja California Peninsula.
References
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