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 word geste has 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
the Geste du Roi, and the best-known of these, the
Chanson de Roland or SONG 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 (called laisses) of varying length, united by
assonance—that is, repetition of identical vowel
sounds—in the final word of each line of the laisse.
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.
Bibliography
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.