Chivalric Romances

Abstract

Contemporary commentators were unanimous about the prominence of one type of text within the cheap printed literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and surviving printers’ lists and advertisements bear them out. This genre was the romance of chivalry, which had been a fundamental element of popular literature since its beginnings, not only in Ireland, but in Britain and Europe as well. None of the printed romances popular in Ireland was in fact indigenous, unlike the texts in the other genres to be considered. This is probably because of the way the ‘country market’ evolved in Ireland, being supplied initially from London, and later with Dublin reprints of English texts. Romances, being among the earliest titles produced for that market, were also among the most likely to be imported. Native romantic tales did exist, of a type very similar to the printed romances, but they were in manuscript and in the Irish language. A printing trade that functioned in English would not necessarily have been aware of them, or interested in having them translated.