The progress of Romance from medieval to modern literature 352 Chrestien of Troyes, his inconsistencies--nature and convention 352 Departure from conventional romance; Chrestien's _Enid_ 355 Chrestien's _Cliges_--"sensibility" 357 _Flamenca_, a Provençal story of the thirteenth century--the author a follower of Chrestien 359 His acquaintance with romantic literature 360 and rejection of the "machinery" of adventures 360 _Flamenca_, an appropriation of Ovid--disappearance of romantic mythology 361 The _Lady of Vergi_, a short tragic story without false rhetoric 362 Use of medieval themes by the great poets of the fourteenth century 363 Boccaccio and Chaucer--the _Teseide_ and the _Knight's Tale_ 364 Variety of Chaucer's methods 364 Want of art in the _Man of Law's Tale_ 365 The abstract point of honour (_Clerk's Tale_, _Franklin's Tale_) 366 Pathos in the _Legend of Good Women_ 366 Romantic method perfect in the _Knight's Tale_ 366 _Anelida_, the abstract form of romance 367 In _Troilus and Criseyde_ the form of medieval romance is filled out with strong dramatic imagination 367 Romance obtains the freedom of Epic, without the old local and national limitations of Epic 368 Conclusion 370 APPENDIX Note A--Rhetoric of the Alliterative Poetry 373 Note B--Kjartan and Olaf Tryggvason 375 Note C--Eyjolf Karsson 381 Note D--Two Catalogues of Romances 384 INDEX 391 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION I THE HEROIC AGE The title of Epic, or of "heroic poem," is claimed by historians for a number of works belonging to the earlier Middle Ages, and to the medieval origins of modern literature. "Epic" is a term freely applied to the old school of Germanic narrative poetry, which in different dialects is represented by the poems of Hildebrand, of Beowulf, of Sigurd and Brynhild. "Epic" is the name for the body of old French poems which is headed by the _Chanson de Roland_. The rank of Epic is assigned by many to the _Nibelungenlied_, not to speak of other Middle High German poems on themes of German tradition. The title of prose Epic has been claimed for the Sagas of Iceland.