Excerpt from The Character Types in the Old French Chansons De Geste Ticknor, in speaking of the Poema dd Cid, remarks that we read it for its living pictures of the age it represents and for the vivacity with which it brings up manners and customs so remote from our own experience that when they are attempted in formal history, they come to us as cold as the fables of mythology. These words express admirably the charm exercised by the old French chansons dc geste upon the mind of the student who wanders at will among their treasures. These poems, at first sight so monotonous and so crude, are really the living expression of the society which produced them. They throb with the pulse of the changing political, social, and literary conditions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. When we recall the importance of these centuries in the pre-renaissance literature of France, we marvel that so little has been written to make clear the place of the epic poems in the evolution of French litera ture. If the Middle Age is an indispensable link in the chain of literary transmission, surely we should seek in the national epic some reflection of the development of French nationality and literary art. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.