Since it has often been said that Martorell pretends to translate from a «normal» language and not an «exotic» one, I hasten to say that I do not know which of these two images of English a Catalan reader of the second half of the fifteenth century might have. One thing, nevertheless, is certain: the practical non-existence of medieval translations from English to Catalan or Castilian, with one intriguing exception: the Castilian translation, made by Juan de Cuenca, of John Gower's Confessio amantis, which according to the author was done on the basis of an existing Portuguese translation, recently discovered. That is to say, like the Tirant.

As Rita Copeland has written referring to the replacement of the original text by translation: «Like commentary, translation tends to represent itself, as "service" to an authoritative source, but also like commentary, translation actually displaces the originary force of its models» (1991: 4). Despite the fact that Copeland's book is more concerned with situating translations in the context of academic practice (for late-medieval literary creation, see especially pp. 179-220), the result of Martorell's pretended operation is the same. For games with authority in French chivalresque biographies, see Gaucher (1994: 285).

In note 11 I have commented on the singularity of another instance of the trajectory English-Portuguese-Castilian. One should ask, moreover, whether Martorell knew that Enric de Villena had also made a double version of his text: Catalan for a Valencian audience, Castilian when his public career finally moved in the direction of Castile.

I take these categories, in so far as they are systematic, from the treatise De historia edited by Karl Halm in Rhetores latini minores «Principiorum ad historian pertinentium species sunt tres: de historia, de persona, de materia. Aut enim historiae bonum generaliter commendamus, ut Cato, aut pro persona scribentis rationem eius quod hoc officium adsumpserit reddimus, ut Sallustius..., set earn rem, quan relaturi sumus, dignam quae et scribatur et legatur ostendimus, ut Livius ab urbe condita» (apud Jaffe 1978: 312).

Boccaccio also, in his commentary on the Divine Comedy, attributes to poets, who are superior to historians, a historiographical mission. See Padoan (1994 I: 278).

«Sed pleni omnes sunt libri, plenae sapientium votes, plena exemplorum vetustas; quae iacerent in tenebris omnia, nisi litterarum lumen accederet. Quam multas nobis imagines non solum ad intuendum, verum etiam ad imitandum fortissimorum virorum expressas scriptores et Graeci et Latini relinquerunt».

See Badia (1993a: 72-3) and Cingolani (1995-96). All the historians I have quoted were circulating in Catalan versions from the end of the fourteenth century. Although so far no one has proposed any for borrowings from Livy, the fact that a medieval Catalan version existed does not rule him out as a possible source for lessons of war. In this sense, it seems to me undeniable that the burning of a wooden bridge in chapter 141 of the Tirant depends directly on the ruse by which the Romans conquer the Sabines in Book I, chapter XXXV, 37 of the first Decade. Moreover, the influence of Valerius Maximus (Cingolani 1995-96) must not be limited to military strategy, since Martorell also used Antoni Canals's translation of the Latin historian as a rhetorical model. One need only compare the speech of the King of Tremicen which begins «O ciutat tirantina» (chapter 349) with Valerius's words against the «ciutat tarentina» (i. e. Tarentum) (II I, 14, ed. Miquel i Planas 1914: 91-2).

«Atheniensium res gestae sicuti ego aestimo, satis amplae magnificaeque fuere, verum aliquanto minores tamen quam fama feruntur. Sed quia provenere ibi scriptorum magna ingenia, per terrarum orbem Atheniensium facta pro maximis celebrantur. Ira eorum qui fecere virtus tanta habetur, quantum eam verbis potuere extollere praeclara ingenia.»

The case of Boccaccio is a little different, though we should not lose sight of the fact that the Filocolo is explicitly placed within the orbit of poetry, and that the Fiammetta is basically Ovid plus Seneca.

It is also worth noting that in a letter addressed to the consellers of Barcelona in 1398, the Cardinal of Valencia, James of Aragon, praises the moral usefulness of Valerius Maximus as opposed to the unworthy «romances» (Miquel i Planas 1914: 3). The same point of view appears in Boccaccio's commentary on Canto V of the Inferno in which, from the learned position of the commentator, he states that the «French romances» are «composed more for pleasure than for truth» (Padoan 1994 I: 323). On Boccaccio's intellectual position in this commentary, see Bruni (1990: 465-77).