CHANSONS DE GESTE, the name given to the epic chron icles which take so prominent a place in the literature of France from the II th to the i 5th century. Gaston Paris defined a chanson de geste as a song the subject of which is a series of historical facts or gesta. These facts form the centre around which are grouped sets of poems, called cycles. It seems probable that as early as the 9th century epic poems began to be chanted by the itinerant minstrels who are known as jongleurs. It is conjectured that in a base Latin fragment of the loth century we possess a translation of a poem on the siege of Girona. Gaston Paris dates from this lost epic the open expression of what he calls "the epic fermentation" of France. But the earliest existing chanson de geste is also by far the noblest and most famous, the Chanson de Roland (see ROLAND) . It is in the crowd of looser and later poems, less fully characterized, that we can best study the form of the typical chanson de geste. These epics were national and historical; their anonymous writers composed them spontaneously, to a common model, with little regard to the artificial niceties of style. The ear lier examples are monotonous, primitive and superficial. Two great merits, however, all the best of these poems possess, force and lucidity ; they are full of Gallic pride, they breathe the spirit of an indomitable warlike energy. All their figures belong to the same social order of things, and all illustrate the same fighting aristocracy. The moving principle is that of chivalry, and what is presented is, invariably, the life of a mediaeval soldier.
Perhaps the most important cycle of chansons de geste was that which was collected around the name of Charlemagne, and was known as the Geste du roi. A group of this cycle dealt with the history of the mother of the emperor, and with Charlemagne him self down to the coming of Roland. To this group belong Bertha Great f oot and Aspremont, both of the i 2th century, and a variety of chansons dealing with the childhood of Charlemagne and of Ogier the Dane. A second group deals with the struggle of Charle magne with his rebellious vassals. This includes Girars de Viane and Ogier the Dane, both of the 13th century or late 12th. A third group follows Charlemagne and his peers to the East. It is in the principal of these poems, The Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, that Alex andrine verse first makes its appearance in French literature. This must belong to the beginning of the i 2th century. A fourth group, antecedent to the Spanish war, is of c. 1200; it includes Aiquin, Fierabras and Otinel. The fifth class discusses the war in Spain, and it is to this that Roland belongs; there are minor epics dealing with the events of Roncevaux, and independent chansons of Gui de Bourgogne, Gaidon and Ansels de Carthage. A sixth and last group deals with events up to the death of Charlemagne ; this con tains Huon de Bordeaux and a vast number of poems of minor importance.
Another cycle is that of Duke William Shortnose, La Geste de Guillaume. It includes the very early and interesting Departure of the Aimeri Children, Aliscans and Rainoart. This cycle deals with the heroes of the South who remained faithful to the throne. The poems belonging to it are numerous. These chansons find their direct opposites in those which form the great cycle of La Geste de Doon de Mayence, sometimes called "la faulse geste," because it deals with the feats of the traitors, of the rebellious family of Ganelon. This is the geste of the Northmen, always hostile to the Carlovingian dynasty. It comprises some of the most famous of the chansons, in particular Parise la duchesse and The Four Sons of Aymon. Several of its sections are the production of a known poet, Raimbert of Paris. From this triple division of the main body of the chansons are excluded certain poems of minor impor tance.
All the best of the early chansons de geste are written in ten syllable verse, divided into stanzas or laisses of different length, united by a single assonance. Rhyme came in with the 13th cen tury, and had the effect in languid bards of weakening the narra tive; the sing-song of it led at last to the abandonment of verse in favour of plain historical prose.
See G. Paris, Histoire poetique de Charlemagne (1865) and La Litterature francaise au moyen age (189o) ; P. Meyer, Recherches sur l'epopee francaise (1867) ; A. Longnon, Les Quatre Fils Aimon, etc. (1879) ; L. Gautier, Les Epopees francaises (4 vols., 1878-94).