Chanson de Geste

Chanson De Geste

The chansons de geste, Old French for "songs of heroic deeds" (from gesta: Latin: "deeds, actions accomplished"), are the epic poems that appear at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known examples date from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the trouvères (troubadours) and the earliest verse romances. They reached their apogee in the period 1150-1250. Composed in verse, these narrative poems of moderate length (averaging 4000 lines) were originally sung, or (later) recited, by minstrels or jongleurs. More than one hundred chansons de geste have survived in around three hundred manuscripts that date from the 12th to the 15th century.