CHANSONS DE GESTE

The chansons de geste (or “songs of great deeds”) are heroic or epic poems in Old French written chiefly in the 12th and 13th centuries. The poems celebrate the martial deeds of historical or pseudohistorical French heroes (the wordgestehas a secondary meaning of “history”) and at the same time glorify the ideals of chivalric feudal society. Although the chansons de geste provide some of the raw material (the “matter of France”) for later medieval romances, their main focus is on war, and love has little or nothing to do with their stories. There are some 120 extant chansons de geste, many of which concern the emperor CHARLEMAGNE and his retinue. This cycle of epics is called theGeste du Roi, and the best-known of these, theChanson de RolandorSONG OF ROLAND, is also one of the earliest (ca.1100). A larger and more unified cycle of 24 poems revolves around the career of William d’Orange (also known as Guillaume de Toulouse), another important historical figure from the time of Charlemagne. Some chansons de geste are written about the exploits of Christian knights against Saracens. A fourth group of poems is concerned with feudal barons from northern France who revolt against their sovereign lords as a result of some injustice.

The typical verse form used among the chansons de geste, at least in the earlier examples, is a 10- or 11-syllable line marked by a strong caesura after the fourth syllable. The lines are grouped into stanzas (calledlaisses) of varying length, united by assonance—that is, repetition of identical vowel sounds—in the final word of each line of thelaisse. One area of scholarly contention regarding the chansons de geste has to do with their origin. There are clearly passages of formulaic diction in the existing poems, which suggests that they have an origin in oral tradition. But it is also clear that the prevailing worldview of the songs seems more that of the period of the Crusades than that of the Carolingian era in which most of the narratives are set. Some scholars believe that the stories originated at Charlemagne’s time and were passed down and added to in oral tradition for hundreds of years.Another theory is that the songs originated much closer to the time of the written versions and were composed by wandering JONGLEURS who picked up historical facts and traditions in their wanderings. Either way it can be said with some certainty that the kernel of the story in each chanson de geste is much older than the written text, and that the individual texts do contain some elements of oral tradition.

■ Calin,William.The Epic Quest: Studies in Four Old French Chansons de Geste. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966.

■ Daniel, Norman.Heroes and Saracens: An Interpretation of the Chansons de Geste. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984.

■ Ferrante, Joan M., trans.Guillaume d’Orange: Four Twelfth-Century Epics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

■ Kay, Sarah.The Chansons de Geste in the Age of Romance: Political Fictions. Oxford: Clarendon Press and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.