With its intertwined episodes and challenging hurdles, romance literature of the Middle Ages gave birth to modern romance novels, but it was not exactly the same genre. For one, the main or essential ingredient of a medieval romance narrative is not the love interest, though that–or at least marriage–plays a significant part in the plot of many tales. Generally, a male hero, his chivalric (or not so chivalric) deeds, and his establishment or restoration of his identity within a family and society, which may or may not involve a relationship with a woman, are key. King Arthur, who rises from obscure origins to rule England, is a perfect example. Occasionally the focus settles significantly upon a heroine who may discover her true identity, or manage to convert a “saracen” husband of a different faith and thus render both her spouse and her new part of the world better within the Christian belief system that dominated western European literature in the Middle Ages. Again, the essential point was social, domestic and personal order: ideally the main character–usually a man–fit into the order more successfully at the end of a medieval romance than the beginning. Love was a possible catalyst, deterrent or benefit within the plot, not a requirement as it is in modern romances.

Women as Owners and Readers of Medieval Romances

The love element of modern romance, which tends to be told from the perspective of female characters, has often been credited with the overwhelming appeal the genre holds for women. Yet the more various plots of medieval romances–some of them rather like action movies, and others more like biblical stories–do not appear to have made them any less appealing to female readers. Many romance manuscripts bear the signs of women owners, and since most books surviving from the Middle Ages do not provide us with evidence of individual owners, we can assume in reality a much larger number of women readers. Some of these are revealed to us in medieval wills, where women both inherit and bequeath all kinds of romance books.

Tales of King Arthur and his noble knights seem foremost among the romances owned by women. We know, for instance, that an early fourteenth-century collection of French Arthurian literature (London, British Library MS Royal 14.E.iii) was inherited by Alyanor Hawte in the fifteenth century. She moved in courtly circles, and appears to have given the book to Elizabeth Woodville, queen of Edward IV. Not only Elizabeth, but also her two eldest daughters, Elizabeth and Cecily, signed the book, suggesting that they read it as well.

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