Belianis
Encyclopedia
Chivalry
Chivalry is a term related to the medieval institution of knighthood which has an aristocratic military origin of individual training and service to others. Chivalry was also the term used to refer to a group of mounted men-at-arms as well as to martial valour...
romance novel
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
, following in the footsteps of the influential Amadis de Gaul. An English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
abridgement
Abridgement
Abridgement or abridgment is a term defined as "shortening" or "condensing" and is most commonly used in reference to the act of reducing a written work, typically a book, into a shorter form...
of this novel was published in 1673.
It is best known today because it was one of the books spared during the expurgation of Don Quixote's library in Chapter 6 of Part I of Don Quixote.
This book was known by the English man of letters Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
; see Eithne Henson, “The Fictions of Romantick Chivalry”: Samuel Johnson and Romance, London and Toronto 1992, and John Hardy, "Johnson and Don Bellianis [sic]," Review of English Studies, new series, vol. 17 (1966), pp. 297-299.