Despite its literary value, the book has remained relatively unknown. This has been attributed to many factors, from controversy over the author(s) to passages that were considered to be racy during the time it was published.
It is generally held that Joanot Martorell wrote most, if not all, of Tirant lo Blanc. Martorell was the son of the kings chamberlain in Valencia. He started Tirant in 1460, and the controversy ensues over whether he was able to finish the unpublished work upon his death in 1468. Little is known about Marti Joan de Galba, who claims to have written the last fourth of the novel. He also dies before the book the book is finally published in the 1490s, and the matter is still debated today. The main argument against the idea that de Galba wrote the latter portion of the novel is that there is no substantial difference in either vocabulary and style through out the novel. This implies it is the work of solely one author.
Another controversy surrounding the authors of the book deals with the fact that Martorell calls his story a translation, first from English, then to Portuguese, and finally into Catalan. Many problems surround this statement. The first being that no earlier manuscripts or even references to these supposed earlier translations can be found. It has been surmised by modern scholars that perhaps Martorell calls his book a translation in the same manner in which Cervantes will do with Don Quixote a century later. This is a literary device used by Cervantes to have his characters appear more realistic, which, is something Martorell is highly praised for.
Some scholars believe that the book is lesser known due to its content, especially the rhetoric it contains. John Vaeth, once a professor at Columbia University in the early twentieth century, states that Tirant is full of "religious and philosophical discourses, speeches and disputations...; formal debates...; documents and papers...; formal challenges and replies...; dramatic lamentations; long and fervent prayers; and allusions to classical Latin authors, to biblical characters and to figures prominent in medieval literature" and that with out these it would "quite probably be considered a masterpiece of narration and dialogue." The argument is that all these passages make the book even harder to accurately translate from its already difficult Catalan tongue.
Bibliography
http://encarta.msn.com/index/conciseindex/41/0416c000.htm
http://ftp.sunet.se/ftp/pub/etext/gutenberg/etext95/whitk10.txt
Martorell, Joanot. Tirant lo Blanch. Trans. Joseph A. Vaeth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1918.