chansons de geste

The chanson de geste, Old French for "song of heroic deeds" (from gesta: Latin: "deeds, actions accomplished"), is a medieval narrative, a type of epic poem that appears at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known poems of this genre date from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the trouvères (troubadours) and the earliest verse romances. They reached their apogee in the period 1150–1250.