Like modern superhero movie franchises, the chansons de geste spawned sequels, prequels, “remakes,” and character-led spin-offs as successive poets and scribes refashioned the stories for their times. And as with superhero franchises, there were a number of dominant “worlds,” with their own casts of characters. Those like the songs of Roland and William, which were set in the time of Charlemagne, were described from the fourteenth century onward as being concerned with the Matter of France. Others, which took as their setting the long-ago events of the Trojan War, the foundation of Rome, and
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