Arthurian Romance from Oxford BibliographiesArthurian romance grew out of chronicles purporting to record the history of King Arthur, his knights, and their martial or amatory adventures. A good number of early works, especially in Welsh and Latin between the 6th and 12th century, alluded to Arthur in lists, enigmatic texts, chronicles, and various fictional creations. However, Arthurian romance as it is generally understood developed first in France, beginning with Chrétien de Troyes’s verse romances in the late 12th century, and soon spread from there to most of the literatures of western Europe.