Medieval Romance: Themes and Approaches

“A fine analysis of the enduring qualities of medieval romance, which Mr. Stevens suggests are qualities found in good fiction of any era.” —E. Talbot Donaldson The romance, the major secular genre for three hundred years, stands to medieval literature as the novel stands to the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mr. Stevens stresses, especially in his introductory chapters, the continuity between medieval and later literature. The subjects of medieval romance are the gre...