CHAPTER XVIII.
GENERAL SURVEY OF ROMANCE LITERATURE.
[Sidenote: Cycles of romance.] In the preceding chapters we have given an outline of the principal epics which formed the staple of romance literature in the middle ages.

As has been seen, this style of composition was used to extol the merits and describe the great deeds of certain famous heroes, and by being gradually extended it was made to include the prowess of the friends and contemporaries of these more or less fabulous personages.

All these writings, clustering thus about some great character, eventually formed the so-called "cycles of romance." There were current in those days not only classical romances, but stories of love, adventure, and chivalry, all bearing a marked resemblance to one another, and prevailing in all the European states during the four centuries when knighthood flourished everywhere.

Some of these tales, such as those of the Holy Grail, were intended, besides, to glorify the most celebrated orders of knighthood,--the Templars and Knights of St.John.
Other styles of imaginative writing were known at the same time also, yet the main feature of the literature of the age is first the metrical, and later the prose, romance, the direct outcome of the great national epics.
We have outlined very briefly, as a work of this character requires, the principal features of the Arthurian, Carolingian, and Teutonic cycles.

We have also touched somewhat upon the Anglo-Danish and Scandinavian contributions to our literature.
Of the extensive Spanish cycle we have given only a short sketch of the romance, or rather the chronicle, of the Cid, leaving out entirely the vast and deservedly popular cycles of Amadis of Gaul and of the Palmerins.