SOURCE: Uitti, Karl D. “Renewal and Undermining of Old French Romance: Jehan de Saintré.” In Romance: Generic Transformation from Chrétien de Troyes to Cervantes, edited by Kevin Brownlee and Marina Scordilis Brownlee, pp. 135-54. Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College, 1985.

In the following essay, Uitti examines the difficulty in classifying Little John of Saintré and contends that what some scholars view as the work's modernity is in actuality a faithful homage to the medieval literary tradition of restoring past events.

The five centuries or so leading from the Old French Life of Saint Alexis to the completion of the prose narratives of Rabelais—the span of medieval vernacular literature in France—may justifiably be seen as one of the most extraordinary laboratories of literary experimentation in recorded history. Nowhere is this “experimental” character more pronounced than in the area of romance narrative. Even though we limit our concern...