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.