The most popular stories of the middle ages today are the romances of knights and Kings. But these romances inspired another kind of literature which succeeded it. As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance refers to a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was particularly current in aristocratic literature of Medieval and Early Modern Europe that narrated fantastic stories about the spectacular adventures of a chivalrous, heroic knight, often of super-human ability, who goes on a quest.

King Arthur, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne. These three Kings and the knights who served them were popular in the middle ages. Their stories were told by troubadours, traveling minstrels who either copied the stories from others, or made up their own. The Romance tradition was all about the adventures of the characters as they encountered fantastical beings like dragons or similar beasts.

The Hero

Many medieval romances recount the marvelous adventures of a chivalrous, heroic knight, often of super-human ability, who, abiding chivalry’s strict codes of respect and conduct, goes on a quest, and fights and defeats monsters and giants, thereby winning the favor with a lady. The story of the medieval romance focuses not upon love and sentiment, but upon adventure.

The first romances heavily drew on the legends and fairy tales to supply their characters with marvelous powers. Romancers wrote many of their stories in three, thematic cycles:

1. The Arthurian (the lives and deeds of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table).
2. The Carolingian (the lives and deeds of Charlemagne, and Roland, his principal paladin.
3. The Alexandrian (the life and deeds of Alexander the Great).

In this oppressive time, a new kind of Romance emerged, one that not only removed the fantastical elements of the Medieval Romance, but used a character similar to the troubadour to expose the oppressive church and other social ills. That formula that the Jester was the one at court who was allowed to speak the most freely, because he was allowed to mock the King holds true for this new kind of Literature, known as the Picaresque.

Named for the Picaro, (Spanish for Rogue), the Picaresque’s main characters were men who lived by their wits in a world surrounded by hypocrites, especially among the ruling class. They would often portray Kings, nobility and even the clergy in a negative light, in order to expose the real life hypocrisy of “Spain’s Golden Age” and the simultaneous Inquisition.

The romances of medieval days featured high-born Kings, knights and squires as the courageous heroes for all, and now the common man was the hero of the common people. Such boldness has echoed through the centuries to where the common people and the common man are idolized and all are free to scorn leaders, the powerful and the clergy.

Tags: medieval romance, romances of medieval days, successor to the medieval romance