The chivalric romance is a type of story written in prose or verse that was widely read in the noble courts of high medieval and early modern Europe. These stories often included imaginative adventures filled with wonders, featuring a brave and noble knight who goes on a quest. Over time, it evolved from earlier epic stories, with a focus on love and polite behavior that sets it apart from other epics, which mainly highlight military bravery.

Popular literature also used themes from romance, but with humor, satire, or exaggerated styles. These stories adapted legends, fairy tales, and historical events to match the interests of readers and listeners. However, by around 1600, romances were no longer in fashion. Miguel de Cervantes famously used humor to mock them in his novel Don Quixote. Despite this, the modern idea of "medieval" is more shaped by romances than any other medieval genre. The word "medieval" often brings to mind images of knights, distressed damsels, dragons, and other romantic themes.

Originally, romance literature was written in Old French (including Anglo-Norman), Old Occitan, and Early Franco-Provençal. Later, it was also written in Old Portuguese, Old Spanish, Middle English, Old Italian (Sicilian poetry), and Middle High German. In the early 13th century, romances were increasingly written in prose. In later French romances, there was a clear trend to focus on themes of courtly love, such as remaining faithful during difficult times.

Form

The genre of romance, like the chansons de geste, focused on traditional themes. These stories differed from earlier epics because they included many magical events, themes of love, and multiple connected stories, rather than a single main character and simple plot. Early romances were always written in verse, but by the 15th century, many were written in prose, often retelling older rhymed versions.

Romances often followed a wish-fulfillment pattern, where heroes and heroines represented the ideals of their time, while villains symbolized threats to those ideals. A common structure in romances involved a hero’s journey or quest, which helped organize the story. Scholars note that romances share similarities with folk tales. Vladimir Propp identified a basic structure for this genre: it began with an initial situation, then a departure, followed by a complication, two key actions, and finally a resolution. This same structure appears in romance stories.

Most romances were linked in some way, often through a shared opening story, to three major thematic cycles: the "Matter of Rome" (centered on Alexander the Great and the Trojan War), the "Matter of France" (featuring Charlemagne and his knight Roland), and the "Matter of Britain" (about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, including the search for the Holy Grail). Medieval writers explicitly stated these three cycles formed the basis of all romances.

The three "Matters" were first described in the 12th century by French poet Jean Bodel. His epic Chanson des Saisnes includes the lines:

"Ne sont que III matières à nul homme atandant: De France et de Bretaigne et de Rome la grant"
"There are only three subject matters for any discerning man: That of France, that of Britain, and that of great Rome."

However, many romances were not connected to these cycles. Examples include King Horn, Robert the Devil, Ipomadon, Emaré, Havelok the Dane, Roswall and Lillian, Le Bone Florence of Rome, and Amadas.

Some stories appear so frequently that scholars group them into categories like the "Constance cycle" or the "Crescentia cycle." These terms refer not to repeated characters or settings, but to recognizable plot patterns that appear across different tales.

Early forms

Many medieval romances tell stories about brave knights who go on adventures. These knights follow strict rules of honor and bravery. They often fight monsters and giants to win the favor of a lady. The Matter of France, a popular early story, focused on heroic deeds rather than love. For example, in The Song of Roland, Roland is engaged to Oliver's sister but does not think about her during the story. Later, stories about love became more common, especially in the Matter of Britain. These stories made King Arthur's court seem like the best example of true and noble love. Even early writers about love believed it reached its highest form in Arthur's time. A common theme in these stories was saving a lady from a dangerous monster, a theme that continued in many medieval romances.

These stories were originally written in Old French (like Anglo-Norman) and Old Occitan. Later, they were also written in Old Spanish, Middle English, and Middle High German. Important Spanish works included The Book of the Knight Zifar. Notable English stories were King Horn (a translation of an Anglo-Norman tale by Mestre Thomas) and Havelok the Dane (a translation of an anonymous Anglo-Norman story). Around the same time, Tristan by Gottfried von Strassburg and Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach translated classic French stories into German.

Forms of the High Middle Ages

In the early 13th century, romances were often written in prose and expanded through continuing stories. These stories were collected in large manuscript collections now called the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, with La Mort le Roi Artu around 1230 possibly being the last part. These texts, along with other Arthurian stories like those in the anonymous English Brut Chronicle, became the foundation for Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur. During the later Middle Ages, prose became the main way to tell romance stories, though verse returned during the high Renaissance in works by Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, and Edmund Spenser.

In Old Norse, these stories are called prose riddarasögur or chivalric sagas. The genre began in 13th-century Norway with translations of French chansons de geste and later included original stories. By the early 14th century, Sweden developed its own verse romances, supported by Queen Euphemia of Rügen, who commissioned the Eufemiavisorna.

Another trend in the high Middle Ages was the allegorical romance, influenced by the widely read Roman de la Rose.

Late Medieval and Renaissance forms

During the late medieval and Renaissance periods, a major European literary trend focused on stories filled with magic, adventure, and romance. Important works, such as Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur (around 1408 to around 1471), the Valencian Tirant lo Blanch, and the Castilian or Portuguese Amadís de Gaula (1508), inspired many other writers. These stories were widely read and led to famous Renaissance poems, including Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, as well as other 16th-century works in the romance genre. Royal celebrations, such as Queen Elizabeth I’s Accession Day tilts, used details from these stories, including knights wearing disguises and adopting names like the Swan Knight or using symbols linked to characters like Lancelot or Tristan.

The printing press helped spread these stories more widely, allowing more people to read about fairies and other magical elements. However, from the high Middle Ages onward, some religious critics believed these stories distracted readers from more serious or moral writings. By 1600, many non-religious readers also thought romances were outdated or childish, as seen in the character of Don Quixote, a man from the Spanish province of La Mancha who becomes obsessed with chivalric tales. Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605, 1615) satirizes this obsession. Similarly, Hudibras mocks the old traditions of chivalric romance. Some magical elements from romances also appeared in plays and operas, such as John Dryden’s The Indian Queen (1664) and Handel’s Rinaldo (1711), which was based on a magical scene from Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata.

During the Renaissance, humanists, who valued Greek and Latin classics, criticized romance stories as crude and silly. However, these criticisms did not stop people from reading romances. In England, romance stories continued, often featuring complex plots and emotional themes. Examples include Robert Greene’s Pandosto (the source for Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale), Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde (based on the medieval tale Gamelyn and the source for Shakespeare’s As You Like It), Robert Duke of Normandy (based on the story of Robert the Devil), and A Margarite of America.

Related forms

The Acritic songs, which are about Digenis Acritas and other border guards, are similar to the chanson de geste. However, these songs developed at the same time but in different regions. They described the challenges and exciting experiences of the Eastern Roman Empire's (Byzantium) border guards, including their romantic relationships. These songs were mostly passed down by word of mouth and remained in the Balkans and Anatolia until recent times. This style may have mixed with Western traditions when French and Italian knights occupied Byzantine lands after the 4th Crusade. Evidence of this blending appears in later Greek writings that show influences from both traditions.

Relationship to modern "romantic fiction"

In later stories, especially those from France, there is a clear pattern of focusing on themes like loyalty during difficult times. Around 1760, especially after the 1764 publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, the word "romance" began to mean stories filled with strange, spooky, and adventurous elements, such as those in Ann Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance (1790) or The Romance of the Forest (1791). These stories often included romantic elements, but later works shifted to focus on the development of relationships that ended in marriage. During the Romanticism period, stories with female main characters often showed realistic portrayals of relationships, similar to the "novel of education" for women. In Gothic novels like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, romantic themes were mixed with feelings of fear and danger. Nathaniel Hawthorne used the term "romance" to describe his works, and 19th-century critics often saw a difference between "romance" and "novel," as seen in H. G. Wells’s "scientific romances" at the start of science fiction.

In 1825, the fantasy genre began to grow when the Swedish story Frithjof’s Saga, based on the older Friðþjófs saga ins frœkna, became popular in England and Germany. This work was translated into English 22 times, German 20 times, and many other European languages, including modern Icelandic in 1866. This story greatly influenced later writers like J. R. R. Tolkien, William Morris, and Poul Anderson, as well as the modern fantasy genre.

Today, the term "romance" most often refers to the romance novel, a type of story that focuses on the relationship and love between two people. These novels must end with a happy and satisfying conclusion.

Although the modern idea of "romance" is often linked to love stories, other works are still called romances because they use elements from older stories, such as heroic characters, exciting adventures, magical events, themes of honor and loyalty, or fairy-tale-like settings. Shakespeare’s later comedies, such as The Tempest or The Winter’s Tale, are sometimes called romances. Modern stories may separate romance from love stories into different types, such as planetary romance or Ruritanian romance. Science fiction was once called "scientific romance," and gaslamp fantasy is sometimes called "gaslight romance." Flannery O’Connor mentioned the use of the grotesque in fiction as part of "the modern romance tradition."

Examples

• Ruodlieb
• Stories by Chrétien de Troyes
• Queste del Saint Graal
• Perceforest
• The Knight in the Panther's Skin
• Valentine and Orson
• King Horn
• The Squire of Low Degree
• Romance of the Rose
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Guilhem de la Barra (by Arnaut Vidal)
• Guillaume de Palerme
• Le Morte D'Arthur (by Sir Thomas Malory)
• Amadís de Gaula (by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo)
• The Knight's Tale and The Wife of Bath's Tale (from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer)
• Chevalere Assigne
• Sir Eglamour of Artois
• Octavian
• Ipomadon
• Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle
• The Knightly Tale of Gologras and Gawain
• Tirant lo Blanch (by Joanot Martorell)
• Amadas
• Sir Cleges
• The King of Tars
• Sir Isumbras
• Erl of Toulouse
• Generides
• Roswall and Lillian
• Hertig Fredrik av Normandie
• Orlando Innamorato
• Orlando Furioso (by Ludovico Ariosto)
• Le Roman du Comte d'Artois