Romance of Evast and Blaquerna

With his Romance of Evast and Blaquerna,composed in Montpellier around 1283, Ramon Llull completed the most ambitious novel until that point ever written. It was so both in terms of its plot structure and its narrative realisation. What Llull wished to accomplish was a "total novel", namely, a fiction which accounted for everything that was primordial within both individual and collective life; for everything that was of paramount importance within the public spheres of Church, politics, estate or profession; for everything that was essential to the internal and moral dimensions of the individual. Robert D. Hughes is a specialist in medieval Catalan literature and a widely published translator.