Page:Tirant lo Blanch; a study of its authorship, principal sources and historical setting (IA cu31924026512263).pdf/183

 manner, or makes him the victim of mishaps that tend to decrease our admiration for him. And then as a climax to these occasional disparaging portrayals, he endows his hero with a low, immoral nature.

Tirant lo Blanch is pictured to us as a noble, generous, religious, intrepid, valiant, and invincible military leader. He is admirable in all respects but one—he is morally a weakling. This inconsistency, together with other incongruities, has led a scholarly critic to declare that Tirant lo Blanch is a parody on the romances of chivalry and that "the animus of the whole narrative is satire." But the romance taken as a whole does not warrant such a conclusion, for the general tone of it is earnest and sincere. Several features of the work seem to be presented in a satirical spirit, but still it is very doubtful that the author intended to hold up certain foibles, follies or vices to reprobation and ridicule. Is it not rather probable that these features are due to the realistic tendencies of the author, or to his whims and humors? Were some of these features perhaps intended as a protest against the immorality of knights in general? Were they to teach a moral lesson? If these questions are answered affirmatively, difficulties will confront us, for Hypolite, the paramour of the empress, is not punished for his sinful liaison; on the contrary he is rewarded, for after the death of the emperor and the princess he becomes the imperial ruler and his reign is a long and glorious one. Nor was he to be punished in the next world, for we are told " e podeu creure que per lo bon regiment, e per la bona e virtuosa vida fon [Lemperador e la Emperadriu] collocats en la gloria de paradis." It is impossible to believe that it was Martorell's purpose