Coda
Taking its cue from the Victorian periodical debates characterizing realism as a crocodile and romance as a monster or ‘catawampus’, this chapter examines the role played by Amadis in early discussions of what the novel was, or should be; how it had developed; and where its future direction lay. For literary historians, Amadis constituted a bridge between the newly constructed ‘medieval’ and the emergent ‘modern’. Philosopher-theorists (Bakhtin) and novelists (Nabokov) alike continued to be fascinated by the relationship of Amadis to Don Quixote and its implications for theories of the novel. Novelists themselves (Bulwer Lytton, Ouida, and Thackeray) enlisted Amadis in their critique of modern masculinity. The final iteration of Amadis in English takes the form of chivalric compilations and abridgements for children; this concluding transformation proves to be emblematic of the many varieties of cultural work into which romance can be enlisted.