The chivalric romance is a type of story written in prose and verse that was popular in the noble courts of high medieval and early modern Europe. These stories often feature a brave knight who goes on a quest filled with amazing adventures. Over time, it evolved from epics. It focuses more on love and polite behavior, unlike other epics like the chanson de geste, which highlight military bravery.
Popular stories sometimes used romance themes but with humor or satire. Romances changed old stories, fairy tales, and history to fit what people liked. However, by around 1600, they were no longer popular. Miguel de Cervantes made fun of them in his book Don Quixote. Today, the idea of "medieval" is more shaped by romances than other medieval stories. The word "medieval" makes people think of knights, damsels in trouble, dragons, and other romantic elements.
At first, romance stories were written in Old French, Old Occitan, and Early Franco-Provençal. Later, they were also written in Old Portuguese, Old Spanish, Middle English, Old Italian (like Sicilian poetry), and Middle High German. In the early 13th century, more romances were written in prose. French romances later focused more on themes like loyalty during difficult times.
Form
The genre of romance, like the chansons de geste, focused on traditional themes. These stories differed from earlier epics by including magical events, love, and many connected stories rather than a single main plot. Early romances were written in verse, but by the 15th century, many were written in prose, often retelling older rhymed versions.
Romance stories often showed heroes and heroines as examples of the ideals of their time, while villains represented dangers to their success. A common pattern in these stories was a hero’s journey, which helped organize the narrative. Scholars note that romances share similarities with folktales. Vladimir Propp identified a basic structure for this genre, which included an initial situation, a departure, a complication, two key actions, and a resolution. This structure also appears in romance narratives.
Most romances were connected in some way, often through an opening story, to three main thematic cycles: the "Matter of Rome" (centered on Alexander the Great and the Trojan War), the "Matter of France" (about Charlemagne and his knight Roland), and the "Matter of Britain" (featuring King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, including the quest for the Holy Grail). Medieval writers explicitly stated that these three cycles made up all romances.
The three "matters" were first described in the 12th century by French poet Jean Bodel in his epic Chanson des Saisnes, which included 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 part of 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 frequently, leading scholars to group them as the "Constance cycle" or the "Crescentia cycle." These terms refer not to repeated characters or settings but to recognizable plot patterns.
Early forms
Many medieval romances describe the amazing journeys of brave knights who follow strict rules of honor and bravery. These knights often go on quests, fight monsters and giants, and earn the respect of a noble lady. The Matter of France, a popular early story, focused on heroic adventures rather than love. For example, in The Song of Roland, Roland is engaged to Oliver's sister but does not think of her during the events of the story. Later, themes of love became more common, especially in the Matter of Britain. People began to see King Arthur's court as the best example of true and noble love. Even early writers about love claimed it reached its highest form in Arthur's time. A common story in these romances was rescuing a lady from a dangerous monster, a theme that continued throughout the medieval period.
At first, these stories were written in Old French (including 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 works were King Horn (a translation of the Anglo-Norman Romance of Horn by Mestre Thomas) and Havelok the Dane (a translation of the anonymous Anglo-Norman Lai d'Haveloc). 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
During the early 13th century, romances were written more often as prose and expanded through continuing stories. These stories were collected in large manuscripts that form what is 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. In the later Middle Ages, prose writing became the main way to tell romance stories, though verse returned during the high Renaissance in the works of Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, and Edmund Spenser.
In Old Norse, these stories are called riddarasögur or chivalric sagas. The genre began in 13th-century Norway with translations of French chansons de geste and later grew to include original stories. By the early 14th century, Scandinavian verse romances appeared in Sweden, 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 popular European literary style was the romance genre, which included stories with magical and heroic elements. Important works, such as Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, Tirant lo Blanch from Valencia, and Amadís de Gaula from Castile or Portugal, inspired many other writers. These stories were widely enjoyed and led to famous Renaissance poems like Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto and Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso, as well as other 16th-century works in the romance style. Royal events, such as Queen Elizabeth I’s Accession Day tilts, used details from romances to create costumes and disguises for knights. Some knights even took names from romance characters, such as the Swan Knight, or used symbols linked to figures like Lancelot or Tristan.
The printing press helped spread romance stories more widely, including their portrayals of fairies and magical beings. However, during the high Middle Ages, religious critics often claimed romances were distractions from more serious or moral writings. By 1600, many readers agreed, and in the 17th century, some scholars saw romances as outdated and childish, comparing them to characters like Don Quixote, a man obsessed with chivalric tales in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. The story satirizes the unrealistic ideas of chivalry. Works like Hudibras also mocked these old-fashioned themes. Some romantic elements influenced plays and operas, such as John Dryden’s The Indian Queen (1664) and Handel’s opera Rinaldo (1711), which was inspired by a magical scene from Gerusalemme Liberata.
During the Renaissance, humanists criticized the romance genre as crude and silly, favoring Greek and Roman classics instead. However, these criticisms did not stop common readers from enjoying romances. In England, romance stories continued to be written, often with complex plots and emotional themes. Examples include Pandosto by Robert Greene, which inspired Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge, based on a medieval story and the source for As You Like It. Other works included Robert Duke of Normandy and A Margarite of America.
Related forms
The Acritic songs, which focus on Digenis Acritas and other border guards, are similar to the chanson de geste, but they developed at the same time in different regions. These songs describe the challenges and exciting experiences of soldiers who protected the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), including their personal relationships. They were mostly passed down through spoken word and remained in the Balkans and Anatolia until recent times. This style of storytelling may have mixed with Western traditions after French and Italian knights occupied Byzantine lands following the 4th Crusade. Evidence of this blending appears in later Greek writings, which show influences from both the Eastern and Western traditions.
Relationship to modern "romantic fiction"
In later romantic stories, especially those from France, there is a clear trend to focus on themes like loyalty and love during difficult times. Starting around 1760—often noted as 1764 with the release of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto—the word "romance" began to describe stories filled with strange, eerie, and frightening elements, such as those written by Ann Radcliffe in A Sicilian Romance (1790) or The Romance of the Forest (1791). These stories often included romantic elements, but later works shifted focus to the process of a relationship developing over time, ending in marriage. During the Romanticism period, stories with female main characters explored these relationships within realistic settings, similar to how male-focused stories showed personal growth. In Gothic novels like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, romantic feelings were mixed with fear and danger. Nathaniel Hawthorne used the term "romance" to describe his works differently from "novels," and 19th-century critics often recognized the difference between the two, as seen in H.G. Wells’s "scientific romances," which were early science fiction stories.
In 1825, the fantasy genre began to take shape when the Swedish story Frithjof’s Saga, based on the older Friðþjófs saga ins frœkna, became popular in England and Germany. It was translated many times into English and German, as well as other European languages, including modern Icelandic in 1866. This story greatly influenced later writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, William Morris, and Poul Anderson, and helped shape the modern fantasy genre.
Today, the term "romance" most often refers to romance novels, a type of story that centers on the relationship and love between two people. These stories must end with a happy, satisfying conclusion.
Even though the popular meaning of "romance" now focuses on love stories, other works are still called romances because they include elements from older traditions, such as larger-than-life heroes, dramatic adventures, fantastical events, themes of honor and loyalty, or fairy-tale-like settings. Shakespeare’s later plays, like The Tempest or The Winter’s Tale, are sometimes called romances. Modern stories may separate romance from love stories into different genres, 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, when discussing the use of the grotesque in fiction, mentioned its role in "the modern romance tradition."