The Noble Merchant: Problems of Genre and Lineage in Hervis De Mes

Jones argues that the Old French epic Hervis de Mes offers valuable insight into the expansion and diversification of a prominent medieval genre. In the early thirteenth century, the chanson de geste diversified by assimilating plots, compositional modes, and narrative strategies that had previously been the domain of romance, and yet was still excluded from the literary canon. Jones reclaims this thirteenth-century work for modern readers.