The chanson de geste, which typically recounts the wars of historical (and pseudo- historical) French heroes in the manner of an epic, has long been treated as the oldest genre of vernacular narrative in France. Nevertheless, for most of its recorded history it co-existed with the romance and was subject to many of the same influences. Thus, while the Old French epic probably originated in an oral tradition, the earliest surviving examples from the twelfth century (the Chanson de Roland, Gormont et Isembart, the Chanson de Guillaume), already reflect written, and often clerical traditions. The later chansons de geste were composed in the wake of these early examples, and compiled into the cycles of Charlemagne, the rebel barons, and William of Orange. As these cycles developed, some of the chansons de geste added to them were influenced by the conventions of the contemporary romance, but the epic genre retained its popularity through the fourteenth century, and in the fifteenth century many of the poems were reworked into prose.

In addition to its ‘historical’ content and its concern with high politics and warfare, the chanson de geste was distinguished by its meter and its form. In contrast to the octosyllabic couplet of romance, the epic poems were composed in longer, decasyllabic or alexandrine lines, grouped in stanzas (or laisses) of unequal length. Although the earliest examples were assonanced, the later poems were written in monorhymed laisses. Whether or not they were composed orally, the chansons de geste exhibit an inscribed oral quality, evident in the narrator’s appeals to the audience for silence or attention. Their formulaic language and themes are also those characteristic of epic poetry, and their motifs relate mainly to military activities – knights and their armour, descriptions of battles, and various types of individual combat.