Studia Filologiczne UJK

Summary

The Great Overseas Conquest is a compilation of four literary genres: chronicle, novel, chansons de geste, and legend. It depicts the course of the Crusades. The work is a compilation of Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum by William of Tire and several Old French chansons de geste, such as Knight of the Swan, Bertha Broadfoot, The Youthful Deeds of Godfrey, Mainete, Eracles, Song of Antioch, and Song of Jerusalem. Some of these also belong to the genres of legend or chivalric novel. These texts contain reminiscences of hagiographic texts and subsequent subgenre layers in their structure, such as: “historical novel,” “collection of legends with a historical background,” “knight’s chronicle,” or “songs about the deeds of Christians.” This work also contains topos such as homo viator, ubi sunt, memento mori, and danse macabre. The multi-layered nature of The Great Overseas de Ultramar also incorporates various heterotoponymic influences. Individual microtexts are integrated into the whole of this literary work as a macrotext.