The romances that form the subject of this paper were not written by famous named authors, or by identifiable poetic masters. Almost all are anonymous, and so do not lend themselves to the kind of traditional criticism that one can apply to writers who have a known life and context; and since the dates of composition and the intended audiences for some are uncertain, and others are translations of works originally written within different political circumstances and a different social and linguistic culture, it is not at all easy to historicize them in the new or the old senses. They tend to be open about their meanings, avoiding subtexts and codes, so they are not amenable to the kind of hermeneutic of suspicion that fuels New Historicism. They are often talked about as ‘popular’ romances, though the term is somewhat misleading, since any text that was written down in the Middle Ages has by definition at least something elite about it. They are, however, written in English, not French or Anglo-Norman, and so mark themselves as linguistically accessible to all social classes. They do not generally carry the markers of high culture that characterize medieval French-language romance, though a number of them exist in continental or insular French versions as well as English; and several of the later ones were ‘popular’ almost by definition in the sense conveyed by the shift from individual manuscript copies to entire printed editions. It remains true, however, that all these romances overtly address the concerns of the gentry and the upper classes rather than peasants or townsmen; they emerge from an elite culture, first that of the Anglo-Norman romances written for aristocratic readers, later that of the ducal court of Burgundy, and throughout the Middle Ages their link with the aristocracy remains close – a fact that is of some importance for much of what follows.

The title ‘When Romance Comes True’ probably sounds like a paradox. ‘Romance’ has become the accepted antonym of ‘realism’, and we accordingly tend to define romance in terms of what is not true: much killing of dragons and giants by knights in shining armour. Those elements are of course there, but it is tempting to emphasise them to a degree that makes us overlook just how closely much Middle English romance connects with real life.