LATE EPIC
. The late narrative poems in chanson de geste form, sometimes called chansons
d’aventures, extended the life of Old French epic, with significant modifications, well
into the Middle French period. The turning point between earlier and later forms of the
epic is difficult to fix, but it may conveniently be placed near the middle of the 13th
century. With works like Huon de Bordeaux, Maugis d’Aigremont, and Vivien de
Monbranc, the epic texts began to increase in complexity and length, became relatively
rigid in form, and showed preference for elements that were less important in earlier epic
works, such as love intrigues, comedy, the quest, and the non-Christian supernatural.
Like earlier epics, the poems of this period share a fund of names, episodes, motifs, and
even formulae. The last original work composed in chanson de geste form was probably
the Enfances Garin de Monglane (15th c.; the octosyllabic version of Lion de Bourges is
from the 16th). Numerous verse and prose reworkings continued throughout the 15th
century, and the prose versions were widely diffused in printed form from 1478 on, some
at last becoming staples of the 19th-century popular literature series known as the
Bibliothèque Bleue.
The late epics retain many of the formal aspects of the chanson de geste, including
clear laisse division, epic meter (the strongly caesural rhyming Alexandrine is almost
universal), formulae, and performer’s asides (anticipations and résumés of the action and
commentary on it, appeals for money, and so on). Nico van den Boogaard showed the
continuity of techniques associated with oral transmission for Tristan de Nanteuil, but
such techniques are to be found in the group generally. Some texts show a marked
tendency to end the laisse with a proverb or sentential commentary on the action.
Much of the action is that found in earlier French epics and indeed throughout all epic
literature. The later chansons display examples of heroic solidarity in combat and great if
sometimes misplaced concern for knightly conduct. They also spend considerable time on
various forms of love, with occasional realistic and comic aspects, and, in the wake of
Huon de Bordeaux, include magic, monsters, the otherworld, and other preternatural
phenomena. Their characters are drawn from several walks of life, not only from the
military elite; their heroes are complex beings, shown in a variety of situations and
sometimes exhibiting ambiguous moral stances. Comic elements occur, and even
predominate, as, for example, in sections of Baudouin de Sebourc (ca. 1330–50; 25,778
lines). This combination of fairly traditional form with new content has led Léon Gautier,
François Suard, and Robert F.Cook to treat the late epics as belonging to a unified
chanson de geste genre, although Gautier thought them degenerate, immoral, and trivial
(“ils n’ont de l’épopée que la forme”). Cook follows Jean Subrenat in calling the late
texts simply “la chanson de geste de l’époque gothique” and with Suard pleads for their
full integration into studies on the genre.
On the other hand, Suard and William Kibler have brought out macrostructural
differences between the earlier texts and the later. Kibler finds close parallels between the
episodic and agonistic structure of the later texts and the structure of “romance” as
defined by Northrop Frye. This has led him to propose treating the 14th- and 15th-
century epic or quasiepic texts as a separate genre of broad popular appeal, under the
name chansons d’aventures. Such a classification has the advantage of lifting the cloud of
The Encyclopedia 993