Imaginative Literature

Scholars seeking out representations of crusading in European imaginative literature have argued that apart from the epic and cycles devoted to the First Crusade, vernacular literature contains relatively few explicit invocations of the historical world of crusading (as opposed to, say, the world of Charlemagne). Strikingly, what references do appear in Old French, Middle High German, and Anglo-Norman romances, describe not the large-scale crusade campaigns but instead independent crusading. This fact would seem to argue for indepedent crusading as both a widespread and normative practice, perhaps more typical of the crusading experience than the larger campaigns.