CONTENTS:

1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
2. THE HERITAGE OF MEDIEVAL FICTION
     1. Women Characters and Romantic Love
     2. Contributory Techniques in the Romances
     3. Sir Gawain as Society Romance
     4. The Achievement of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde
     5. The Medieval Heritage in Shorter Narratives: Exempla and Fabliauxs
3. THE LATE PHASE OF MEDIEVAL ROMANCE
     1. Changing Social Contexts
     2. Survival and Adaptations of Simpler Types
     3. Sustained Passages of Society Romance in Early Prose
     4. The Special Case of Caxton’s Reynard as Anti-Romance
4. THE RISE OF POPULAR FICTION: ITS MINOR FORMS
     1. From Exempla to Secular Anecdotes
     2. Enchained Anecdotes about Jesting Heroes
     3. The Anti-Romantic Novelle
     4. Realistic Narrative in the Social Pamphlets; Long Meg
5. ROMANTIC FICTION CONTINUED AND TRANSFORMED
     1. New Successors of the Society Romance
     2. Medieval Allegory and Debate Continued as Prose Romance
     3. Separate Romantic Novelle: First Group
     4. Separate Romantic Novelle: Major Group
     5. Framed Novelle
6. COURTLY ROMANCE, ELIZABETHAN STYLE
     1. Neo-Chivalric Tales Translated into English
     2. The English Imitators
     3. The Neo-Hellenic Romances: Arcadian Type
     4. The Neo-Hellenic Romances: Euphuistic Type
     5. Euphuism Plus Satire: Lodge and Chettle
7. TOWARDS THE FORMS OF MODERN FICTION
     1. The Impact of the Spanish Picaresque
     2. Some English Picaresque
     3. Celestina and the Elizabethan Bawds
     4. Harvey and Gascoigne: Two Experimenters in a New Style
     5. Fiction for the New Middle Classes
8. RETROSPECT AND SUMMARY