SOURCE: “The Matter of France” in English Medieval Romance, Longman Group UK Limited, 1987, pp. 89-108.

In the following excerpt, Barron considers the relationship between the French and the English romance through the exploration of key works including the Chanson de Roland,Otuel and Roland, The Sege of Melayne, The Sowdon of Babylon, and Fierabras.

The dual effect of the Norman Conquest in severing the Germanic roots of English culture and importing a dialect of romanz which exposed England to the cultural influence of France in the age of its ascendancy was ultimately to have profound consequences. The Matter of England romances show how slow the roots were to wither and how readily they became entwined with elements of the imported culture to produce narrative literature equally appealing to English and Anglo-Norman audiences. Not all such elements were equally assimilable: the dominant form of secular literature in the century...