El Victorial

El Victorial O Crónica of gift Pero Niño is a biographical chronicle relating to the life and the exploits of Pero Niño (1378 - 1453), count de Buelna. Work was composed by its carries-étendart, Gutierre Díez de Games. It is about a narration in prose joining together of the elements of the literature of knighthood, and in which various literary registers mix: fiction, biography, history.

The Victorial had to know a first drafting around 1406. However, the essence of the composition undoubtedly goes back to 1436, and certainly was supplemented in 1448. It is also possible that an epilog was added in 1453 in order to conclude the biography from Pero Niño.

Work starts with a long introductory prolog, in which the author quotes several stanzas of the Libro de Alexandre (long poem of the XIIIe century), to evoke the universe of the knighthood and to present strucure of the work. This last is composed then of three different parts:

the first part is devoted to the birth of gift Pero Niño, with its chalk-lining, its education, the exploits of its youth and its first marriage;
the milked second part of the Mediterranean countryside of 1404 carried out by the Castille against the Maghrebian corsairs. It evokes also various military operations off the French coasts, within the framework of the One hundred Year old War, to which share Castille of Henri III takes. She reports finally the countryside against the Royaume of Grenade of 1407;
the third part is shortest and attempts to report the loves of Pero Niño with Béatrice of Portugal, as well as the tended relations that the noble soldier maintains with Jean II Aragon.

Though the biography is favorable to Pero Niño, for which the author writes, this one does not fall into happy adulation. Most of work is devoted to report the battles in which had to take part the silent partner-protagonist. The Victorial integrates elements of the accounts of voyages, then in vogue: It Milione of Marco Polo, or in Castille, the Embajada has Tamorlán de Ruy González de Clavijo . Nevertheless, the total attitudes and the ideology dominating the Victorial are indeed indebted with the literature of knighthood. One finds accounts of tournaments there, equestrian exercises minitieusement depicted. The cop of control of the characters in addition follows the rules of court of the time. It is probable that the aristocracy of the time followed such behaviors, out of the fiction. The book thus seems to constitute a reflection of the company peerage-book of then.

Random links: