Romance

Romance, literary genre popular in the Middle Ages, dealing, in verse or prose, with legendary, supernatural, or amorous subjects and characters. The word refers to Romance languages and originally denoted any lengthy composition in one of those languages. Later the term was applied to tales specifically concerned with knights, chivalry, and courtly love. The romance and epic are similar, but epics tend to be longer and less concerned with courtly love.

Romances began to appear in western Europe in the 12th century and reached their greatest popularity in the late 13th century; they remained in vogue until the Renaissance. At first, they were related orally by troubadours and trouvères. Subsequently, they were written by court musicians, clerics, scribes, and aristocrats for the entertainment and moral edification of the nobility. Several romances deal with Alexander the Great, King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, and Emperor Charlemagne. The Arthurian romances fall into three broad groups. Some, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, are tales that involve the moral testing of a young knight. Others, such as the Tristan und Isolt of Gottfried von Strassburg, describe the conflict between passion and duty. The third group, exemplified by Chrétien de Troyes's romance Percival, is concerned with the search for the Holy Grail. See Arthurian Legend.

Some romances were linked to ballads. Aucassin and Nicolette, one such chant-fable, or song-story, is about two young lovers. Romances also often had their basis in classical legends. Sir Orfeo, for example, recounts the Orpheus and Eurydice story, but places it in a medieval setting. The supernatural is always an important element in romances, as in the testing by the mysterious lady in Sir Gawain.

Eventually, a tradition of sophisticated contemporary romances developed, typified by the 13th-century Le Roman de la rose. This dream allegory, based on the courtly love traditions of the time, contains little history or legend.

Later prose and verse narratives, particularly those in the 19th-century Romantic tradition, are also referred to as romances; set in distant or mythological places and times, they stress adventure and supernatural elements.