ABSTRACT
Apart from short tales in verse and the longer romances, the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries also produced a number of extensive verse-novels of between five and twelve thousand lines. There are considerably fewer of them than of the shorter poems, but most of them have been preserved in more versions. This does not necessarily mean that the type was generally more popular than the smaller epic forms which naturally could more easily get lost and which certainly often existed in many more versions than those that are still extant. Many of the verse-novels are also compilations of widely known legends, whereas the shorter poems often only contain single episodes from these story-cycles or deal with other, less famous heroes and their adventures. With the exception of a few, not very characteristic examples, the novels usually contain the life-history of some particularly famous hero of history or legend, from his birth until his death. They are compilations covering a long period of time and a multitude of adventures without any great regard for unity of structure and theme. This alone makes it rather pointless to put them on the same level as Amis and Amiloun or even Sir Perceval of Gales, poems in which a decisive phase in the life of the hero or a series of significant adventures united by a common theme, are singled out.
