Medieval RomanceThe Middle Ages witnessed the flowering of one of the most important predecessors of the modern short story, the romance. By the late Middle Ages, this genre had become an extremely popular literary form. During the genre’s inception in the eleventh century, the term “romance” referred exclusively to a composition written in French—a “Romance” language. During the literary history of the Middle Ages, however, the term came to denote a fictional narrative of a particular type: The romance is an adventure story focusing upon the experiences of love, honor, terror, and adoration.