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 other classical topics, were said to deal with the Matter of Rome: they treated heroes like Theseus, Achilles, or Alexander the Great as off-the-shelf medieval knights.* The third great “world,” which is today arguably the most famous and enduring of all, was the world of the romances, set in the court of the
...more
