Feliciano de Silva's works in the inventories of the Hispanic libraries of the Golden Age: reading and stock

Abstract

The literary production of Feliciano de Silva, author of a second Celestina and a wide saga of books of chivalry in the path of the Amadis, had an important diffusion in the XVI century and first decades of the following one. This article deals with the presence of his work in Spanish and Indian inventories and catalogues during this period. For this purpose, the social typology of the readers of Silva's works is analysed, as well as the commercial distribution of his copies and their forms of reading. It also investigates, in the light of the readers, the author's own links with the Spanish and Portuguese courts.  And it is analysed how the presence and subsequent absences of his works in the inventories, allows to verify the role of the books of chivalry as reading of consumption and entertainment, suffering the vicissitudes of the reading fashions.