Bernardim Ribeiro--in medieval Portuguese also spelled Bernaldim Ribeyro--lived during the last two decades of the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth century. He achieved fame during the reign of King Manuel I (1495-1521), who also appointed him moço fidalgo (gentleman of the royal chambers). Unlike many of his contemporaries, Ribeiro wrote exclusively in Portuguese. He was primarily a poet and a lyric writer and is credited with having introduced bucolic poetry to Portugal. His prose is characterized by an innovative and well-balanced combination of three novelistic trends: the sentimental, derived from the Renaissance tradition started by Giovanni Boccaccio's Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (Elegy to Lady Fiammetta, 1343-1344); the pastoral, inaugurated by Jacopo Sannazzaro's Arcadia (1501); and the chivalrous, a prose version of the chansons de geste (Old French epic poems) that flourished in Portugal between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries. An overall sense...