[Sidenote: The triumph of Castilian in polite literature.]
[Sidenote: External influences upon Castilian literature.]
The same factors which affected the literary history of the preceding period continued to exist in this, although occupying different positions, and in addition competing with the Classical Renaissance and Italian elements, which almost overwhelmed the others. Just as in the scientific works, so in literature, these factors were assimilated and made over to produce the original Castilian product of succeeding centuries. Castilian became the language of poetry and of didactic works, routing its Galician and Latin rivals. Latin works were translated to Castilian, and from the middle of the thirteenth century the latter began to be used instead of the former in public documents. Galician-Portuguese lyric poetry, half erudite, half popular, born of the Provençal, which it had assimilated and transformed, advanced to its highest point, and seemed to have won a victory over Castilian. About the middle of the fourteenth century it commenced to decline, and by the end of that century Castilian lyric poetry was already predominant; in the fifteenth century Galician ceased to be a literary language, and even Portuguese writers frequently used Castilian. Besides satire and even more sensuality than its Provençal prototype the Galician literature often included ethical and religious sentiments in the same poem. The Provençal influences proper also affected Castile, but did not take root as in Catalonia, because of the difference in language. When Galician poetry lost its place it was the Castilian which became its successor, manifesting in one of its forms the same curious mixture of ethics and satire. At length a satirical element of a free and sensual type prevailed, and brought about a degeneration of this kind of literature. With the fourteenth century the powerful Classical and Italian Renaissance influences made themselves felt in Castile both in poetry and in prose. Works of the classical poets (Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan) and writers of prose (Livy, Sallust, Cæsar, Plutarch, and others) were translated, and served to enrich Castilian literature both in form and in content. The Italian influence proper (Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio) was by far the greatest, however, especially that of Dante, which vanquished the former French influence in poetry, and in part the Galician, and banished the earlier Castilian literary forms. The Italian influence was most deeply felt in its effects on lyric poetry. Epic poetry and prose were not altogether uncultivated, however, and in this field French influence continued to exist. Many of the older unwritten poems were reduced to writing, and French poems of chivalry and French novels of adventure, telling of the fantastic deeds of King Arthur, Charlemagne, the magician Merlin, and others, were repeated or reconstructed in Castilian. The fabulous element became predominant, leading to the books of _caballería_, or chivalry, based on the extraordinary adventures of wandering knights (_caballeros andantes_), full of the extravagant exaggeration of unbridled imagination. The first great work of this sort in the peninsula, and the best of its kind, was a novel by Vasco de Lobeira called _Amadés de Gaula_, written originally in Portuguese, but already known in Castile in the later fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century amatory novels began to appear.