Maiden and Modest

"In Maiden and Modest the loves and sufferings of knights and ladies come alive, in a landscape of enchanted beauty, which includes uncanny visitations from the spirit world. Ribeiro's prose reveals the sensibilities of a poet, but with the psychological insight of a novelist, and Maiden and Modest is part of the substratum from which the modern novel would emerge. In his narratives Ribeiro was as conscious of the ambiguities of gender relationships as any of the writers who came later. He was also a master storyteller, and his tightly woven plots extract the maximum potential from the searing tragedies that unfold."—T. F. Earle, King John II Professor of Portuguese Studies, University of Oxford

"Bernardim Ribeiro's psychological novel, a sequence of embedded tales told by a young female narrator, carries chivalric tales into a modern tradition of inner questioning and doubt in the face of the uncontrollable forces and strategies of desire. Thanks to Rabassa's brilliant translation, Maiden and Modest can now take its place alongside Renaissance classic texts."—K. David Jackson, professor of Portuguese, Yale University