Developing psychological awareness
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
As W.P. Ker, a pioneer in the study of medieval epic and romance, observed in his Epic
and Romance (1897), the advent of romance is “something as momentous and as far-reaching as
that to which the name Renaissance is generally applied.” The Old French poets who composed
the chansons de geste (as the Old French epics are called) had been content to tell a story; they
were concerned with statement, not with motivation, and their characters could act without
explicitly justifying their actions. Thus, in what is one of the earliest and certainly the finest of
the chansons de geste, the Chanson de Roland (c. 1100), the hero’s decision to fight on against
odds—to let the rear guard of Charlemagne’s army be destroyed by the Saracen hordes in the
hopeless and heroic Battle of Roncesvalles rather than sound his horn to call back Charlemagne
—is not treated as a matter for discussion and analysis: the anonymous poet seems to take it for
granted that the reader is not primarily concerned with the reason why things happened as they
did. The new techniques of elucidating and elaborating material, developed by romance writers
in the 12th century, produced a method whereby actions, motives, states of mind, were
scrutinized and debated. The story of how Troilus fell in love with Briseïs and how, when taken
to the Grecian camp, she deserted him for Diomedes (as related, and presumably invented, by
Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie) is not one of marvellous adventures in some
exotic fairyland setting: it is clearly a theme of considerable psychological interest, and it was for
this reason that it attracted three of the greatest writers of all time: Boccaccio in his Filostrato (c.
1338), Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde (before 1385), and Shakespeare in his Troilus and
Cressida (c. 1601–02). With the 12th-century pioneers of what came to be called romance, the
beginnings of the analytical method found in the modern novel can easily be recognized.
Sources and parallels
Where exactly medieval romance writers found their material when they were not simply
copying classical or pseudo-classical models is still a highly controversial issue. Parallels to
certain famous stories, such as that of Tristan and Iseult, have been found in regions as wide
apart as Persia and Ireland: in the mid-11th-century Persian epic of Wis and Ramin and in the
Old Irish Diarmaid and Gráinne; but while in the latter case it is possible to argue in favour of a
genetic link between the two traditions, the former is more likely to be a case of parallel
development due, on the one hand, to the inner logic of the theme and, on the other, to certain
similarities in the ideological and social background of the two works. Failure to maintain the
essential distinction between source and parallel has greatly hindered the understanding of the
true nature of medieval romance and has led to the production of a vast critical literature the
relevance of which to the study of the genre is at best questionable.
The marvellous
The marvellous is by no means an essential ingredient of “romance” in the sense in which
it has been defined. Yet to most English readers the term romance does carry implications of the
wonderful, the miraculous, the exaggerated, and the wholly ideal. Ker regarded much of the
literature of the Middle Ages as “romantic” in this sense—the only types of narrative free from
such “romanticizing” tendencies being the historical and family narrative, or Icelanders’ sagas
developed in classical Icelandic literature at the end of the 12th and in the early 13th century.
The Chanson de Roland indulges freely in the fantastic and the unreal: hence Charlemagne’s
patriarchal age and preternatural strength (he is more than 200 years old when he conquers
Spain); or the colossal numbers of those slain by the French; or, again, the monstrous races of
men following the Saracen banners. Pious legends, saints’ lives, and stories of such apocryphal
adventures as those of the Irish St. Brendan (c. 486–578) who, as hero of a legend first written
down in the 9th-century, Navigatio Brendani, and later widely translated and adapted, wanders
among strange islands on his way to the earthly paradise—these likewise favour the marvellous.
The great 12th-century Roman d’Alexandre, a roman d’antiquité based on and developing the
early Greek romance of Alexander the Great (the Alexander romance), was begun in the first
years of the century by Alberic de Briançon and later continued by other poets. It introduces
fantastic elements, more especially technological wonders and the marvels of India: the springs
of rejuvenation, the flower-maidens growing in a forest, the cynocephali (dog-headed men), the
bathyscaphe that takes Alexander to the bottom of the ocean, and the car in which he is drawn
through the air by griffins on his celestial journey.
The setting
The fact that so many medieval romances are set in distant times and remote places is not
an essential feature of romance but rather a reflection of its origins. As has been seen, the Old
French word romanz early came to mean “historical work in the vernacular.” All the romans
d’antiquité have a historical or pseudohistorical theme, whether they evoke Greece, Troy or the
legendary world of Alexander; but, while making some attempt to give antiquity an exotic aspect
by means of marvels or technological wonders, medieval writers were quite unable to create a
convincing historical setting; and thus in all important matters of social life and organization they
projected the western European world of the 12th century back into the past. Similarly, historical
and contemporary geography were not kept separate. The result is often a confused jumble, as,
for example, in the Anglo-Norman Hue de Rotelande’s Protesilaus, in which the characters have
Greek names; the action takes place in Burgundy, Crete, Calabria, and Apulia; and Theseus is
described as “king of Denmark.” This lavish use of exotic personal and geographical names and
a certain irresponsibility about settings was still to be found in some of Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies: the “seacoast of Bohemia” in The Winter’s Tale is thoroughly medieval in its
antecedents. In the medieval period, myth and folktale and straightforward fact were on an equal
footing. Not that any marvel or preternatural happening taking place in secular (as opposed to
biblical) history was necessarily to be believed: it was simply that the remote times and regions
were convenient locations for picturesque and marvellous incidents. It is, indeed, at precisely this
point that the transition begins from the concept of romance as “past history in the vernacular” to
that of “a wholly fictitious story.”
