The aim of this little book is to give general readers some idea
of the subject and spirit of European Continental literature in
the later and culminating period of the Middle Ages--the
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.

It goes without saying that translations and selections are, in
general, inadequate to the satisfactory representation of any
literature. No piece of writing, of course, especially no piece
of poetry, can be perfectly rendered into another tongue; no
piece of writing can be fairly represented by detached portions.
But to the general English reader Continental Mediaeval
literature, so long as it remains in the original tongues, is
inaccessible; and translations of many entire works are not
within easy reach.

What translation and selection can do in this case, is to put
into the hands of the ordinary student of the Middle Ages
sufficient material for forming an estimate of the subjects that
interested the mediaeval mind and the spirit in which they were
treated. And this is what the general reader desires. Matters of
form and expression--the points that translation cannot
reproduce--belong, of course, to the specialist.

The claim that so slender a volume of selections can represent
even the subject and spirit of so vast a body of literature, is
saved from being unreasonable or presumptuous by a consideration
of the fact that, from causes easy to trace, the national
literatures of Continental Europe had many common
characteristics: the range of subjects was not unlimited; the