Chivalric romance

In the 13th century, during the great period of prose romances, Tristan en prose or Prose Tristan became one of the most popular romances of its time.

The Lancelot-Grail, also known as the Vulgate Cycle or the Pseudo-Map Cycle, is an early 13th-century French Arthurian literary cycle consisting of interconnected prose episodes of chivalric romance in Old French.

The main plot of The Winter's Tale is taken from Robert Greene's pastoral romance Pandosto, published in 1588.

At the beginning of the 13th century, Jean Bodel, in his Chanson de Saisnes, divided medieval French narrative literature into three subject areas: the Matter of France or Matter of Charlemagne; the Matter of Rome (romances in an ancient setting); and the Matter of Britain (Arthurian romances and Breton lais).

Parzival is a medieval romance by the knight-poet Wolfram von Eschenbach in Middle High German.

Historically, the term romance originates with the medieval ideal of chivalry as set out in the literature of chivalric romance.

Most such novels took the form of "chivalric romance", tales of adventure, devotion and honour.

Amadís de Gaula (in English Amadis of Gaul) (Amadís de Gaula, ); Amadis de Gaula, ) is a landmark work among the chivalric romances which were in vogue in sixteenth-century Iberian Peninsula, although its first version, much revised before printing, was written at the onset of the 14th century.

The first part of the poem's story is set in a walled garden, an example of a locus amoenus, a traditional literary topos in epic poetry and chivalric romance.

The theme of desire is at the core of romance novels, which often create drama by showing cases where human desire is impeded by social conventions, class, or cultural barriers.