MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 403 king or emperor too much exalted. In fact, in the poems we often find Charlemagne's vassals in a state of rebellion against him, but this is more often explained as due to his misunderstanding and ill-treating these faithful lieges than to treachery or selfishness on their part. Women receive more attention in the later chansons de geste than in the Song of Roland, but the attitude of the knights toward them is not that of romantic w devotion. Indeed, it is not only not chivalrous, the chansons as we understand the word ; it is often not even e gesie considerate or decent. Violent language is used by the knights to the ladies, and the latter sometimes receive even blows from their husbands, usually in the form of a stiff punch on the nose. Most wives are none the less devoted to their lords, while the naive, unmarried maidens do not hesi- tate to express openly and in his presence their decided pre- ference for this or that young warrior. Despite these crudi- ties, as they appear to modern taste, the literary form of the poems keeps much the same sonorous majesty as in the Song of Roland, although rhyme has replaced assonance and the length of the line has been increased to twelve syllables. The poets of southern France showed more consideration
- for woman, and by far the greater part of their extant
J poetry consists of love-songs. With them, too, L . try j the ideals of chivalry, courtesy, and romantic of the ! love had their birth. Ninety-five per cent of their work, it is estimated, has been lost; but we know the names
- of nearly five hundred troubadours, as the southern singers
were called, whereas most chansons de geste are anonymous. ' There is a good reason for this difference. The troubadours 'were expressing their own feelings and inventing new and difficult verse-forms and vying with one another in poetical contests and debates; whereas the writers of the epics were repeating, all in the same style of verse, stories about other i men of the distant past. The poems of the troubadours are short compared to the northern epics and are lyric in char- acter, although they were usually sung to the accompani-
