Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. La chanson de Roland et la tradition épique des Francs, trans. (from
Spanish) by the author and I.-M.Cluzel. 2nd ed. Paris: Picard, 1960. [“Traditionalist” approach.]
Owen, Douglas David Roy. “The Secular Inspiration of the Chanson de Roland.” Speculum
37(1962):390–400.
Vance, Eugene. Reading the Song of Roland. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970.
van Emden, Wolfgang G. “‘E cil de France le cleiment a guarant’: Roland, Vivien et le theme du
guarant” Olifant 1 (1974): 21–47.
ROMANCE
. In Old French, the term roman, used as early as 1150 in the Romances of Antiquity,
originally designated a work in French as opposed to Latin. Even when Chrétien de
Troyes employs an expression like entreprendre/faire un roman (“to embark on/to make
a roman”) a usage that emphasizes the writer’s creative activity, roman still maintains its
primary meaning of a “story composed in French,” intended for a lay courtly public that
did not know Latin. Only later did the term take on the generic meaning of “romance”
(and, even later, “novel”) associated with it today.
With the important exception of the Roman d’Alexandre, written in epic laisses,
romances of the 12th century were composed in octosyllabic rhyming couplets, a form
used also in didactic and scientific literature of the period, as well as in historical
chronicles in French. In the 13th century, with the appearance of literary prose, romances
in verse and prose existed side by side. Only in the course of the 14th century did prose
become the preferred medium of romance.
Unlike chansons de geste and lyric poetry, which were sung, romances were intended
to be read, aloud and before a select company, from manuscript books. Their prologues
often insist upon the talent of the writer and generally give the author’s name and the title
of the work. Romances assert their status as a written product.
The first text considered a “romance” is the Alexander fragment by Albéric de
Pisançon (first third of the 12th c.). In the decade after 1150, the Romances of Antiquity
and vernacular chronicles, which evoked Britain’s past, appeared simultaneously (Geffrei
Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis, Wace’s Brut and Rou, Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s
Chronique des ducs de Normandie). Both romances and chronicles sought to celebrate
the past for the benefit of the men and women of their day. The act of writing, above all
an act of remembering, also represents the diffusion of knowledge and wisdom. Several
romances open with references to classical, pagan, or biblical wisdom and repeatedly
invoke the writers’ obligation to exploit their God-given talent. Blessed by their historical
situation, writers of romance could build upon the inherited Latin sources and interpret
them in a definitive manner, giving them, in Marie de France’s words, a surplus de sens
(“an abundance of meaning”). Writers of romance thus saw themselves as the privileged
heirs of a secular translatio of learning and chivalry, from Greece through Rome to
France and Norman England, whose destiny and deeds they were to celebrate.
Jehan Bodel’s famous distinction among the Matter of France (chansons de geste), the
Matter of Rome (Romances of Antiquity), and the Matter of Britain:
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