ABSTRACT
Between the shorter romances and the extensive novels in verse there are a number of poems of a medium size which, perhaps, have not so much in common with each other that they can be treated as a distinctive group, but which all attempt (each in its own way) to present a more extensive yet strictly unified kind of romantic tale, not a brief episode, nor a comprehensive compilation. It is worth noting that only a comparatively small number of such romances from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are extant and this confirms the assumption that the shorter tale which could be read in one sitting and the additive, less unified compilation were more or less clearly defined types which had proved useful and generally served as models for most adapters. Neither does any of the works discussed in this chapter seem to have enjoyed particular popularity because none has survived in more than one manuscript.1
