
The subjects of medieval romance are the great and permanent concerns of the human mind. A literature is best approached by newcomers, through its major achievements, the author of this book, originally published in 1973, maintains.

The romance, the major secular genre for three hundred years, stands to medieval literature as the novel stands to the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mr. Stevens stresses, especially in his introductory chapters, the continuity between medieval and later...
