As a
literary genre of
high culture,
romance or
chivalric romance is a type of
prose and
verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of
High Medieval and
Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled
adventures, often of a
knight-errant portrayed as having
heroic qualities, who goes on a
quest, yet it is "the emphasis on love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the
chanson de geste and other kinds of
epic, in which masculine military heroism predominates." Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with
ironic,
satiric or
burlesque intent. Romances reworked
legends,
fairy tales, and history to suit the readers' and hearers' tastes, but by c. 1600 they were out of fashion, and
Miguel de Cervantes famously
burlesqued them in his novel
Don Quixote. Still,
the modern image of "medieval" is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word
medieval evokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons, and other romantic tropes.