book I

, chapters 40 and 42, it is recorded that the Infante Alphonso of Portugal suggested a radical change in the narrative of Briolanja's relations with Amadis. This prince has been identified as the Infante Alphonso who died in 1312, or as Alphonso IV. who ascended the Portuguese throne in 1325. Were either of these identifications established, the date of composition might be referred with certainty to the beginning of the 14th century or the end of the 13th. But both identifications are conjectural. Nevertheless the passage in the Spanish text undeniably lends some support to the Portuguese claim, and recent critics have inclined to the belief that Areadis de Gaula was written by Joao de Lobeira, a Galician knight who frequented the Portuguese court between 1258 and 1285, and to whom are ascrihed two fragments of a poem in the Colocci-Brancuti Canzoniere (Nos. 240 and 240b) which reappears with some unimportant variants in Amadis de Gaula (