ABSTRACT
To most people today the word romance1 suggests a love story, and because some medieval romances involve famous love stories-such as those of Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Iseult, Floris and Blancheflour-they assume that a love interest is a necessary ingredient in the romance of the Middle Ages. This is not strictly true. One has only to think of the romances of Alexander, Richard the Lion-Hearted, and many lesser figures to realize that medieval romance could get along very well with little or no love element. The basic material is knightly activity and adventure, and we may best put the emphasis in the right place if we define the medieval romances as a story of adventure-fictitious and frequently marvelous or super-natural-in verse or prose. Except for the few romances in which a love story is the main feature,2 love, if it enters into the narrative at all, is either subordinated to the adventure (Erec, Yvain), or is incidental, as when a Saracen princess conceives a desperate passion for the hero (Bevis of Hampton), or is used as a motivating force, an excuse for the adventures of the hero (Guy of Warwick). It may be added that the earlier romances are in verse; those in prose are generally late. The former ordinarily range in length from one thousand to six thousand lines, with occasional productions running to nearly double this limit. The commonest metres are the eight-syllable couplet and a variety of tail-rime stanzas (aabccb, aaabcccb, and twelve-line stanzas of more elaborate pattern).
