Chivalric romance
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As a literary genre, the chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the noble courts of high medieval and early modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a chivalric knight-errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest. It developed further from the epics as time went on; in particular, "the emphasis on love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the chanson de geste and other kinds of epic, in which masculine military heroism predominates."[1]
Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with
Originally, romance literature was written in
Form
Unlike the later form of the
The romantic form pursued the wish-fulfillment dream where the heroes and heroines were considered representations of the ideals of the age while the villains embodied the threat to their ascendancy.[5] There is also a persistent archetype, which involved a hero's quest. This quest or journey served as the structure that held the narrative together. With regards to the structure, scholars recognize the similarity of the romance to folk tales. Vladimir Propp identified a basic form for this genre and it involved an order that began with initial situation, then followed by departure, complication, first move, second move, and resolution.[6] This structure is also applicable to romance narratives.
Cycles
Overwhelmingly, these were linked in some way, perhaps only in an opening
In reality, a number of "non-cyclical" romances were written without any such connection;[7] these include such romances as King Horn,[8] Robert the Devil,[9] Ipomadon,[10] Emaré,[11] Havelok the Dane,[12]Roswall and Lillian,[13] Le Bone Florence of Rome,[14] and Amadas.[15]
Indeed, some tales are found so often that scholars group them together as the "Constance cycle" or the "Crescentia cycle"—referring not to a continuity of character and setting, but to the recognizable plot.[7]
Sources
Many influences are clear in the forms of chivalric romance.
Folklore and folktales
The earliest medieval romances dealt heavily with themes from folklore, which diminished over time, though remaining a presence. Many early tales had the knight, such as
Early persecuted heroines were often driven from their husbands' homes by the persecutions of their mothers-in-law, whose motives are seldom delineated, and whose accusations are of the heroines' having borne monstrous children, committed infanticide, or practiced witchcraft — all of which appear in such fairy tales as The Girl Without Hands and many others. As time progressed, a new persecutor appeared: a courtier who was rejected by the woman or whose ambition requires her removal, and who accuses her of adultery or high treason, motifs not duplicated in fairy tales.[19] While he never eliminates the mother-in-law, many romances such as Valentine and Orson have later variants that change from the mother-in-law to the courtier, whereas a more recent version never goes back.[19]
In Italy there is the story called Il Bel Gherardino. It is the most ancient prototype of an Italian singing fairy tale by an anonymous Tuscan author. It tells the story of a young Italian knight, depleted for its "magnanimitas", who wins the love of a fairy. When he loses this love because he does not comply with her conditions, Gherardino reconquers his lady after a series of labours, including the prison where he is rescued by another woman and a tournament that he wins. Other examples of Italian (Tuscan) poetry tales are Antonio Pucci's literature: Gismirante, Il Brutto di Bretagna or Brito di Bretagna ("The ugly knight of Britain") and Madonna Lionessa ("Lioness Lady"). Another work of a second anonymous Italian author that is worth mentioning is Istoria di Tre Giovani Disperati e di Tre Fate ("Story of three desperate boys and three fairies").
Religious practices
The Arthurian cycle as a Medieval work has also been noted to contains many magical or supernatural references. Drawing from many different sources, some notable allusions include elements of Christianity (an example being the multiple references to the Holy Grail) as well as elements of Celtic legends.[20]
Medieval epic
The Medieval romance developed out of the medieval epic, in particular the
Contemporary society
The romance form is distinguished from the earlier
Historical figures reappeared, reworked, in romance. The entire Matter of France derived from known figures, and suffered somewhat because their descendants had an interest in the tales that were told of their ancestors, unlike the Matter of Britain.
Classical origins
Some romances, such as Apollonius of Tyre, show classical pagan origins.[31] Tales of the Matter of Rome in particular may be derived from such works as the Alexander Romance. Ovid was used as a source for tales of Jason and Medea, which were cast in romance in a more fairy-tale like form, probably closer to the older forms than Ovid's rhetoric.[32] It also drew upon the traditions of magic that were attributed to such figures as Virgil.[20]
Courtly love
The new courtly love was not one of the original elements of the genre, but quickly became very important when introduced.
It was introduced to the romance by
Early forms
Many medieval romances recount the marvellous
Originally, this literature was written in
Forms of the High Middle Ages
During the early 13th century, romances were increasingly written as prose, and extensively amplified through cycles of continuation. These were collated in the vast, polymorphous manuscript witnesses comprising what is now known as the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, with the romance of La Mort le Roi Artu c. 1230, perhaps its final installment. These texts, together with a wide range of further Arthurian material, such as that found in the anonymous English Brut Chronicle, comprised the bases of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Prose literature thus increasingly dominated the expression of romance narrative in the later Middle Ages, at least until the resurgence of verse during the high Renaissance in the oeuvres of Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, and Edmund Spenser.
In Old Norse, they are the prose
Another trend of the high Middle Ages was the allegorical romance, inspired by the wildly popular Roman de la Rose.
Late Medieval and Renaissance forms
In late
From the high Middle Ages, in works of piety, clerical critics often deemed romances to be harmful worldly distractions from more substantive or moral works, and by 1600 many secular readers would agree; in the judgement of many learned readers in the shifting intellectual atmosphere of the 17th century, the romance was trite and childish literature, inspiring only broken-down ageing and provincial persons such as
In the
Related forms
The
Relationship to modern "romantic fiction"
In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a marked tendency to emphasize themes of
In 1825, the
Modern usage of term "romance" usually refer to the romance novel, which is a subgenre that focuses on the relationship and romantic love between two people; these novels must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending."[52]
Despite the popularity of this popular meaning of Romance, other works are still referred to as romances because of their uses of other elements descended from the medieval romance, or from the Romantic movement: larger-than-life heroes and heroines, drama and adventure, marvels that may become fantastic, themes of honor and loyalty, or fairy-tale-like stories and story settings. Shakespeare's later comedies, such as
Examples
- Romances of 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
- Arnaut Vidal
- Guillaume de Palerme
- Sir Thomas Malory
- Amadís de Gaula – Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo
- "The Knight's Tale" and "The Wife of Bath's Tale" from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
- 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 – 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 – Ludovico Ariosto
See also
- Beowulf
- Chinese knight-errant
- Don Quixote
- Iconography of Charlemagne
- Fenian cycle, and Cycles of the Kings
- Heroic fantasy
- Medievalism
- Nibelungenlied
- Nine Worthies
- Pas d'armes
- Picaresque
- Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
- Romanticism
- Sword and sorcery
- The Tale of Igor's Campaign
- Troubadour
References
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- ^ Hibbard & Loomis 1963, p. 83.
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- ^ Purdie, Rhiannon. 2001. Ipomadon. Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society.
- ^ Hibbard & Loomis 1963, p. 23.
- ^ Hibbard & Loomis 1963, p. 103.
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- ^ Hibbard & Loomis 1963, p. 73.
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- ^ ISBN 978-0-8122-1786-5.
- ^ Ker, William Paton (1908). Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature. London: Macmillan. p. 53.
- ^ Ker 1908, p. 52.
- ^ Ker 1908, pp. 3–4.
- ^ Ker 1908, p. 27.
- ^ Huizinga 1996, pp. 75.
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- ^ Scott 2007, p. 93.
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- ^ Keen 1989, p. 39.
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- ^ Lewis 1954, p. 421.
- ^ Lewis 1954, p. 422.
- ^ Lewis 1954, p. 423–424.
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- ^ "Romance Novels--What Are They?". Romance Writers of America. Archived from the original on 2006-10-03. Retrieved 2007-04-16.
- ^ O'Connor 1984, p. 39.
External links
- Media related to Chivalric romances at Wikimedia Commons
- The International Courtly Literature Society