To survey the field of medieval English and European romance is to witness the remarkable elasticity of a narrative genre that came from an irrepressible urge to tell and retell stories in new languages, with shifting themes, adapted into particular forms, and transmuted into new versions for different geographic, social, and political contexts. The term “romance” applies to a vast domain of texts, which were produced throughout Britain, Europe, and the Mediterranean world, as far west as Wales, as far east as Byzantium, from Scotland to Italy and Spain, from the twelfth century to the early modern period and even later.