The first English examples of fiction in prose were stories from the
great chivalric cycles of Arthur, of Charlemagne, and of Troy and
Alexander. Some of these were written in prose originally, but the
majority were translations, paraphrases, or recensions of metrical
narratives. Some were turned into verse again, and again in that form
were the material for further prose recensions. And throughout these
transformations the matter, the style, and the spirit of the stories
underwent hardly any change. It was only now and then that the
versifier gave a rein to imagination in his battles and pageants; or
was hurried by the swing of the metre into bursts of lyricism, or a
more dramatic curtness in the dialogue; or cut short the explication
of motive and plot, which the prose-writer was inclined to elaborate.
How well the prose sufficed to the minstrel converting it into his own
idiom may be seen by comparing such a metrical romance as the Scots
poem, _Lancelot of the Laik_, with the samples of the French prose
story from which it was translated, in the edition by the Early
English Text Society. There is very little poetical heightening except
where the minstrel tacks on a prologue of his own composing; the rest
is but the effect of the paraphraser’s occasional impulse to change
and invent.[i01] Certainly these {x} writers were not embarrassed by
any preconceptions of a strict boundary line between prose and the
language of poetry, and the uses for which either was especially
ordained. The traditional themes were handled, in both verse and
prose, in the same traditional manner, and were animated by the same
spirit of romantic adventure.

A change of style is almost invariably the result of a change of
thought and feeling; but no profound mental and moral revolution like
that which underlay the romantic movement of the nineteenth century,
was the occasion for turning the mediaeval romances into prose. When
all literary compositions were intended for singing and recitation,
they naturally took a metrical form; but when books were meant to be
read in bower and cloister, it was left to the writer to choose his
vehicle. Thus, while there were true poets like Chrestien de Troyes
and Wolfram von Eschenbach among those working upon the material of
legend, many arrayed themselves in the poetic vesture without having a
spark of divine fire; and the style of many of these metrical
narratives strikes one as too prosaic for the subject, especially if
we base our expectations on Malory, to us the chief exemplar of
mediaeval romance, whose prose, though not in the least resembling in
structure that bastard thing, prose poetry, is thoroughly epical in
its stark simplicity, its sensuous colour, and the haunting suggestion
of beauty and ideality. It was not an age of poetry in the way this
can be said of the early period of Greek literature, when
philosophers, historians, and lawgivers spoke in metre because the
muse was in them. Romance is the decadence of poetry; and while the
traditional forms survived, the poetic impulse grew weaker and weaker.

{xi}

By Caxton and his successors the prose romances of the age of chivalry
were multiplied and circulated among wider audiences than even those
who listened to the mediaeval jongleur: these were the first popular
novels of the Tudor age, yet they were already getting out of date,
inasmuch as they reflected the manners and the ideals of a bygone
period. But there had arisen on the continent two forms of romance
that represent another stage in the development of fiction; the
Spanish chivalric romance typified in _Amadis of Gaul_, and the
pastoral novel of Sanazzaro and Montemayor. The three great legendary
cycles, no matter how wild and fabulous their later excursions, always
claimed to be a reading of history; each writer was careful to state
his authorities, real or fictitious; and though he added life and
circumstance to his narrative, the substance was put forward and
accepted as history. In Spain romance had begun exactly as in Britain
with poetic chronicles of heroic periods, such as the story of the
Cid, round which gathered in the process of time a vast accretion of
anonymous legend. But in the _Amadis_, printed in 1508, but current in
oral or manuscript versions for two centuries at least, Spain gave
birth to a kind of romance in which such history even as that in the
legendary chronicles had no place. Amadis himself, it is true, was
connected with the Arthuriad by his lineage; but with this exception,
the author or authors let both history and historical tradition go,
and in the various knight-errantries of Amadis gave to their
imaginative powers their full fling. In the beauty of its ladies, the
size of its giants, the valour, constancy, and self-denial of its
heroes, the _Amadis_ eclipses all its rivals; and in the _Palmerins_
and _Esplandians_ that were the sequel, these exaggerations are
carried to even more ridiculous lengths. The older romances had
usually been localised in actual places and countries, though these
were often idealised out of all likeness to reality; but Amadis and
his successors met with their adventures and performed their feats of
arms in a region created by the fancy of their authors. Spenser’s
Fairy Land, and Sidney’s Arcadia were no doubt suggested by this
romantic geography.