. A long narrative poem celebrating the exploits (Lat. gesta) of famous national heroes, particularly Charlemagne. As the word chanson implies, at least at the beginning these epic poems were sung or chanted in public, rather than read silently in private chambers.
The chanson de geste could vary in length, from the celebrated Chanson de Roland’s 4,002 lines in editions of the Oxford manuscript to some of the later epics, which number in the tens of thousands of lines. Most lines follow an established form: ten syllables with a caesura, or pause, after the fourth (sometimes the sixth) syllable. Rhyme did not appear until near the end of the 12th century. Until then, assonance sufficed to separate strophes of unequal length, called “laisses.” The early Gormont et Isembart counts only eight syllables per line, while the Voyage de Charlemagne and many later poems survive in dodecasyllables, or Alexandrines. The songs connected with the hero Guillaume are characterized by a short refrain, le vers orphelin, of four syllables, which is sporadically attached to the end of laisses.
Controversy still rages on the manner in which the chanson de geste was born. Three early poems typify the problem: the Chanson de Roland, the Chanson de Guillaume, and Gormont et Isembart. All three portray events that transpired in the 8th or 9th centuries, yet their earliest documentary evidence dates from the late 11th or early 12th century. Scholars of the 19th century sought to explain how the kernel of historical truth underlying such poems could have reached their authors, and in such a distorted form; they concluded that the extant epics stand in a long line of oral narrative poems, called cantilènes, originating at the time of, or immediately subsequent to, the events portrayed. These anonymously composed short poems were later combined into the longer poems that survived. This view is today labeled “Traditionalist.”
A positivist reaction led by Joseph Bédier at the start of the 20th century rejected the continuous poetic tradition in favor of a literate, cultured poet, the trouvère, composing onto parchment like any modern writer—though for singing by a performer, the jongleur. The individual creator thus replaced the vague group contributors. Few critics have equaled the influence that Bédier had upon literary history; his persuasiveness and clarity of style persuaded most scholars to his theories. Bédier’s famous opening of his four-volume study of Les légendes épiques set forth in a nutshell the basis for his theory: “Au commencement était la route” (“In the beginning was the [pilgrimage] road”). Truly positivistic, Bédier accepted only tangible evidence in the elucidation of his theory of origins. He rejected outright any notion of cantilènes and thus of the existence of oral tradition as bearer of the legends. Epic poems first appeared not in the 9th century, according to Bédier, but in the 12th and thereafter. The poets’ sources were in Latin chronicles that related the Carolingian events that provided the historical kernel; Bédier connected these with monasteries along the pilgrimage routes of Europe, which claimed to have in their possession relics from celebrated heroes. To draw pilgrims to their institutions, the custodians of these venerated objects prepared publicity in the form of the chansons de geste. Bédier insisted upon the near-contemporaneity of the written text and the creation of the surviving epic, while his predecessors (and followers) believed that one way or another, and probably through oral tradition, the event was borne over centuries through history.
Bédier’s view, labeled “Individualism,” dominated scholarship until a “Neotraditionalist” current was inaugurated in 1955 by the publication of Jean Rychner’s Essaisur l’art épique des jongleurs. Rychner relied on the notion that the feudal civilization in which the chanson de geste was born created and consumed “literature” orally. Not only did audiences listen to the singing of the poems, but the poets actually created this highly formulaic poetry in the act of singing. In the wake of Albert Lord’s discoveries about Yugoslav singers of tales still thriving in preNazi Europe, Rychner showed how a poet could memorize motifs, themes, and formulae and skillfully recombine them for oral presentation, recomposing the poem each time he sang it, using his own stock of formulae. Thus are explained in great part the vexing contradictions that appear in almost all the story lines of the epic, the numerous exhortations to listen carefully, and the apparent repetitions.
In the late 1950s, Ramón Menéndez Pidal returned to theories expounded as early as the 19th century concerning the oral origins of the Chanson de Roland. He had investigated the manner in which Spanish epic had been born at the moment of the historical event. In 1924, he published Poesia juglaresca y juglares, demonstrating that Spanish literature cultivated short, totally epic poems and setting forth the hypothesis that French literature undoubtedly passed through a period that mirrored this archaic phase. After Rychner’s book, Menéndez Pidal’s inquiries into the neotraditionalism of the French epic, particularly in the Roland, gave impetus to the growing orality movement. The debate is of importance, for how we view the very nature of the early chansons de geste depends on the answer: are we dealing with literature (in the sense of works composed of letters) at all, or with an ever-changing tradition of sung epic that has no definitive form but exists in a multiplicity of performances, one of which is accidentally preserved in each manuscript manifestation?
No matter its origins, scholars have had to admit the influence of handwriting, courtly romance, and other literary phenomena in the chansons de geste by the end of the 12th century. As the “classical” epic appeared to be dying, efforts were made to preserve its traditional matière by creating and copying accretions, which led to the formation of cycles. An early attested recognition of the division into cycles is recorded by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube in the prologue to Girart de Vienne (early 13th c.). He discerned three: the gesta (deeds) of Charlemagne (the King Cycle), of Doon de Mayence (the Rebellious Vassal or Doon de Mayence Cycle), and of Garin de Monglane (the Guillaume d’Orange Cycle). Aside from the allusion to Charles in the King Cycle, the hero mentioned by Bertrand is not the most famous but rather an ancestor of the principal protagonist of each cycle. To give each hero a glorious past, these authors invented histories of their ancestry. In addition to Bertrand’s divisions, modern scholars have discerned the gestes of the Crusades (of which the most famous is the imaginative Chevalier au Cygne) and those of Lorraine, Blaye, Nanteuil, and Saint-Gilles.
The masterpieces of the genre are generally considered to be the earlier poems: the Chanson de Roland, the Chanson de Guillaume, and Gormont et Isembart, from the early 12th century, and Raoul de Cambrai, Girart de Roussillon, Aliscans, the Couronnement de Louis, the Charroi de Nîmes, and the Prise d’Orange from the late 12th or early 13th century. Throughout the cycles, traits of the genre may be distinguished. The matter is generally grave in tone and women play a dependent role, particularly in the earlier poems. At the heart of the tale are the battle and accompanying motifs: arms and armor, the warhorse, and formulaic acts of combat. The typical jongleur organized his materials so as to recite the events in a linear story without flashbacks or such withholding devices as interlacing, popular in the prose romances. Often, too, the story commences in medias res. The narrator’s voice could be heard infrequently but with considerable authority to comment on the events, characters, or outcome. If the Roland, for example, portrays two fairly unified actions (Roland’s defeat, Charles’s victory), poems of the Guillaume legend tend to be episodic, even contradictory, despite their generally shorter length. Some lack a unified plot entirely, such as the Couronnement de Louis and the Moniage Guillaume.
In a second generation of chansons de geste, composed in the late 12th and 13th centuries, the influence of romance was strongly felt, and women and the fantastic came to play significant roles. Totally absent in Gormont et Isembart, more masculine than feminine in Guillaume, women came to play major roles in such epics as Raoul de Cambrai, the Prise d’Orange, and Aye d’Avignon. The motif of the Saracen princess who converts to Christianity is important in many epics, but love themes always remain secondary to those of battle. Woman is an object of possession, identified generally with the fief and marriage, and is never an object of desire for her own sake. Increasing interest in the marvelous can be seen in Huon de Bordeaux, which places in the foreground a handsome magician and dwarf, Auberon, who will, he claims, take a seat next to God when he decides to depart this world. Even later epics (also called chansons d’aventure), such as Tristan de Nanteuil and Lion de Bourges, feature extraordinary adventures throughout the known (and imagined) world, played out by a cast that includes invulnerable heroes, seductive damsels, angels, shapeshifters, magicians, dwarfs, giants, and fabulous beasts.
Since the 15th century, several notable attempts to revive the epic as a viable genre have failed: among others, Ronsard’s La Franciade, Voltaire’s La Henriade, and Hugo’s Légende des siècles. When the Middle Ages were rediscovered in the 19th century, reaction extended far beyond literary circles into the realm of politics, architecture, and the military. Louis-Napoléon attempted to restore the spirit of epic crusades by venturing into Syria and Crimea. Intellectuals seized upon the epic as a model of the French heritage. While the Round Table was vigorously hailed as a precursor of democracy, the courtly practice of adultery seemed scandalous. To counter the spread of illicit relations, moralists praised the virtues of the epic hero. The scholarly methodology applied to the epic has had handsome rewards. Aside from the variety of approaches that have been useful for other genres, the question of orality has been particularly rich. The study of a warrior society in which the mode of literary consumption was oral has led to new definitions of the process of thinking as well as to surprising cultural ramifications of reliance on voice rather than writing.
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Bulletin bibliographique de la Société Rencesvals. Paris: Nizet, 1958–.
Farrier, Susan. The Medieval Charlemagne Legend: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1993.
Heinemann, Edward A. L’art métrique de la chanson de geste: essai sur la musicalité du récit. Geneva: Droz, 1993.
Martin, Jean-Pierre. Les motifs dans la chanson de geste: définition et utilisation. Lille: Centre d’Études Médiévales et Dialectales, 1992.
Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. La Chanson de Roland y el neotradicionalismo: orígenes de la épica románica. Madrid, 1959; French trans., Irénée-Marcel Cluzel, 2nd ed. rev. with René Louis. La Chanson de Roland et la tradition épique des Francs, Paris: Picard, 1960.
Rychner, Jean. La chanson de geste: essai sur l’art épique des jongleurs. Geneva: Droz, 1955.
Suard, François. La chanson de geste. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993.
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