Tirante el Blanco
In 1453 a momentous event took place that shook Christianity (as Western, Catholic, Europe was primarily called by many writers, and more recently by Bush again), and its hegemonic intentions regarding the Mediterranean: the Turks (or the Ottomans) took Constantinople (so called, for the Roman Emperor Constantine?) and renamed it. Since then it's been known as Istambul.
The conquest of Constantinople not only upset the balance of power in the Mediterranean, it also gave those countries and city-states that normally traded with the East (and therefore depended on the land route to take and bring goods) new impetus to look for alternate routes (seaborne ones) to the "Far" East.
Tirant lo Blanc, written by a Catalan knight, Joan Martorell, is set in Constantinople before the fall of the city, when its ruler is unable to resist the imminent conquest by the Turkish empire, and is begging desperately for Western support (which in reality did not arrive). The princess, the main character, is being pressed in two directions: should she marry the Blond-Heartthrob-superhero-blandmodeltype, and therefore ally herself, and the throne she will inherit, with the West, with Christianity, and Western Europe, or should she be more pragmatic, realistic even (given Christianity's slow response to their plight), and marry the Turkish prince at the door, before the city is taken, with its inevitable results: death and destruction, plunder, enslavement, rape?
These questions are as pertinent today as they were back in the 15th century. If not, think: what are the Western powers doing in Iraq? Why are U.S. warships right now positioning themselves to attack Iran?
Joan Martorell, who wrote the book in the second half of the 15th century, lived in a similar age of anxiety. Unlike other books of chivalry, his is actually much more "realistic" (hence a lot of the fun of the book). His hero dies in bed, other characters marry, have children, and if needed, a mother will pinch a little boy to make him cry so that his knight-father will feel really bad about going to war and leaving them behind. Martorell was an experienced soldier himself, so the scenes of warfare he describes are actually fairly realistic.
Don Quixote, the character, never mentions Tirant (book or character), but the book is found in his library by his friends, the priest and the barber, who scrutinize his collection, a kind of book inquisition, if you like, and procede to burn and destroy most of them. They do save two chivalric romances: Amadis of Gaul, because it is the first book of chivalry printed in Spain, and the most beautifully written of its kind, and Tirant because, says the priest, "in it I have found a wealth of pleasure and a gold mine of amusement.... In it knights eat, sleep, and die in their beds, and make a will before they die, and do everything else that all the other books of this sort leave out." These words give us clues as to why Cervantes "saves" them and burns the others, and hint at why they are important for our understanding of Don Quixote (character and book). Don Quixote himself, however, no longer has any need for books. Once he has refahioned himself as a knigtht and left his drab provincial life behind, he is writing the book of his life, as best he can, with confronting everything else that all the other books leave out...
Until you read the two books, and I hope you all will, do go back and look at how sumptuously beautiful is the recreation of Constantinople in Vicente Aranda's film, and take a close look at the magnificent buildings where it was filmed, including some that were preserved for us as museums that we might enjoy them. Oh, yes, by Attaturk.