THE late middle ages was a golden age of chivalric writing. This period witnessed an exponential increase in the numbers of manuscripts of romances, vernacular chronicles and manuals of both knighthood and warfare in circulation, particularly in France. This was fuelled in part by a dramatic increase in the creation of a string of new works in both verse and prose, written by clerics but also by laymen, including experienced knights like Geoffroi de Charny, Philippe de Mézières, Antoine de La Sale and Jean de Bueil.

This trend is illustrated by the genre of chivalric biography that became increasing popular during the fourteenth century. There was a longstanding history of biographical writing shaped by both classical and Christian traditions, but it was very rare for knights to be commemorated in such texts until the late middle ages. The earliest example of a chivalric biography was the verse life of William Marshal, 4th earl of Pembroke, that was written around 1226 and survives in just one manuscript. From the second half of the fourteenth century, such works became increasingly common, with John Barbour's The Bruce (1375), the Chandos Herald's life of the Black Prince (c.1377–85), Jean Cuvelier's biography of Bertrand Du Guesclin (1381) and a partial account of the life of Jean de Montfort, duke of Brittany, written by Guillaume de Saint-André (c.1382–5). By the start of the fifteenth century, chivalric biographies were consistently written in prose rather than verse. In 1409, for example, an anonymous author completed the Livre des fais du bon messire Jehan le Maingre, a biography of Jean II Le Meingre, known as Boucicaut. The French tradition then continued with works like La chronique du bon duc Loys de Bourbon (c.1429) by Jean Cabaret d’Orville, the Livre des fais de messire Jacques de Lalaing (c.1470) and the Histoire de Gaston IV, comte de Foix by Guillaume Leseur (1477–9).

Where medieval chronicles usually presented a broad narrative within which the tales of various individuals played out, chivalric biographies focused upon the life of a single knight, highlighting his adventures, heroism and courtesy.