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Back to article: JOAO LOBEIRA (c. 1233-1285)

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LOBEIRA, JOAO (c. 1233-1285), a Portuguese troubadour of the time of King Alphonso III., who is supposed to have been the, first to reduce into prose the story of Amadis de Gaula (q.v.). D. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos, in her masterly edition of the Cancioneiro de Ajuda (Halle, 1904, vol. 1. pp. 523-524), gives some biographical notes on Joao Lobeira, who is represented in the Colocci Brancuti Canzoniere (Halle, 188o) by five poems (Nos. 230.233). In number 230, Joao Lobeira uses the same ritournelle that Oriana sings in Amadis de Gaula, and this has led to his being generally considered by modern supporters of the Portuguese case to have been the author of the romance, in preference to Vasco de Lobeira, to whom the prose original was formerly ascribed. The folklorist A. Thomas Pires (in his Vasco de Lobeira, Elvas, 1905), following the old tradition, would identify the novelist with a man of that name who flourished in Elvas at the dose of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century, but the documents he publishes contain no reference to this Lobeira being a man of letters.