How History Became Epic but Lost its Identity on the Way: The Half-Life of First Crusade Epic in Romance Literature

Abstract

This paper examines how the boundary between historic description and epic literature evolved during the lifetime of the Crusade Cycle. The price history paid for its assimilation into epic was a mutation into legend and fantasy until it became barely recognizable as history. This paper looks at three points in that mutation: contemporary to the Crusade; in the Antioche; and in later legendary depictions, including the Second Cycle of the fourteenth century and the Gerusalemme Liberata. A brief tour through historiographical usages in parallel with the chanson de geste form demonstrates the presence of contemporary historical concerns on a background of tradition. The only contemporary event judged worthy of being transmuted into a legend alongside Arthur, Charlemagne and the heroes of Antiquity and the Old Testament, it was transformed through narrative convention and contemporary concerns that divorced the story from history.