Note 53 — MIDDLE-AGE ROMANCE.

Lancelot is regarded as probably the earliest prose romance of chivalry. It was first printed in 1494. The metrical romance called La Charrette, of which Lancelot is the hero, was begun by Chrestien de Troyes, who died in 1191, and finished by Geoffrey de Ligny. We may here observe that almost all the French romances of chivalry were written originally in verse in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, principally by Chrestien de Troyes and Huon de Villeneuve. The prose romances in general were made from them in the fifteenth century.