Among the heroines we have Orbell from Orable, while Blancheflour may have suggested Lillywhite; but the part played by women in the Chansonsde Geste was insignificant.
THE ROUND TABLE But the Round Table stories were versified much later than the true Old French Chansonsde Geste, which had a basis in the national history, and not many of Arthur's knights are immortalized as surnames.
She sang only the old chansons and the songs of the voyageurs, with a far greater sweetness and richness, however, than any in the parish; and the Cure could detect her among all others at mass.
It may, perhaps, be replied to this argument that our Iliad is only a very late remaniement, like the fourteenth century Chansons de Geste, of something much earlier and nobler.
Again, the later remanieurs of the earliest Chansonsde Geste modernise the details of these poems.
That this has been a method in which orally published epics were composed and preserved in a non-reading age we have proved in our chapter on the French Chansons de Geste.
Mr. Raymond Weeks, in Romania, describes Willame as taking a place beside the Chanson de Roland in the earliest rank of Chansons de Geste.
In our opinion these passages are traditional formulae, as in our own old ballads and in the Chansons de Geste, and Noack also takes this view every now and then.
It is guided at once by feudal allegiance and feudal jealousy, like the Chansons de Geste and the early sagas or romances of Ireland.
We frequently find a harper introduced, who is doubtless reciting some romance or history, or singing chansons of a lighter character.
We can trace for instance a marked difference between the effect produced by the Chansons de Geste and that of the Arthurian tales.
The Chansons de Geste formed the stock in trade of those Cantatores Francigenarum, who crowded the streets and squares of Lombard cities.
He therefore resolved to tell a new tale of the mighty Roland; and the originality of his poem consisted in the fact that he treated the material of the Chansons de Geste in the spirit of the Breton legends.
To deal as solemnly with medieval romance as the Northern bards had done, was quite beside the purpose of the improvisatori who refashioned the Chansons de Geste for Italian townsfolk.
With the langue d'oil came the Chansons de Geste of the Carolingian Cycle and the romances of the Arthurian legend.
Perhaps the most important cycle ofchansons de geste was that which was collected around the name of Charlemagne, and was known as the Geste du roi.
As Leon Gautier has said, in the rudimentary psychology of the chansons de geste, man is either entirely good or entirely bad.
All the best of the early chansons de geste are written in ten-syllable verse, divided into stanzas or laisses of different length, united by a single assonance.
The general character of the chansons de geste, especially of those of the 12th century, is hard, coarse, inflexible, like the march of rough men stiffened by coats of mail.
The fifth class discusses the war in Spain, and it is to this that Roland belongs; there are different minor epics dealing with the events of Roncevaux, and independent chansons of Gui de Bourgogne, Gaidon and Anseis de Carthage.
These chansons find their direct opposites in those which form the great cycle of La Geste de Doon de Mayence, sometimes called "la faulse geste," because it deals with the feats of the traitors, of the rebellious family of Ganelon.
To this group belong Bertha Greatfoot and Aspremont, both of the 12th century, and a variety of chansons dealing with the childhood of Charlemagne and of Ogier the Dane.
The earliest chansons de geste were founded on the fusion of the Teutonic spirit, under a Roman form, into the new Christian and French civilization.
The wealth of material is baffling to the ordinary student; of the medieval chansons de geste many hundreds of thousands of lines have been preserved.
In this respect it excels the liquid chansons of the mountain hermit thrush, which is justly celebrated as a minstrel, but which does not rehearse a well-defined theme.
Evidence of this high pitch of popularity is given by the numerous «chansons de geste» or romances, which celebrate the deeds, or are connected with the name, of the great and valiant champion of Christendom.
Once I made fifty dollars at a railway camp telling French Canadian tales and singing chansons Canadiennes.
We may gather a few more details regarding the flags of the crusading period from some of the earlier chansons de geste.
The Germanic origin of the French epic is lost sight of, and imitators are attracted by the French execution, and by the creative power of the chansons de geste.
Not one yet," replied Béranger; "do you suppose chansons are written as easily as epic poems?
Well, my noble songster," began the author of the Philippide, "how many chansons have you already composed under lock and key?
His phrase saves trouble, but one can say that these prose chansons were a picture of Sapphic life and love of a very febrile sort.
In the twelfth century a considerable change was made in French poetry by the rise and progress of a new romantic school in succession to the old chansons de geste--the epic poems on the 'matter of France'.
In form of verse the new romances generally differed from the chansons de geste, but this again is not an exact distinction.
The poems about Charlemagne and his peers, and others of the same sort, are sometimes called the old French epics; the French name for them is chansons de geste.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "chansons" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
