Chanson d'Antioche

The Chanson d'Antioche is a chanson de geste in 9000 lines of Alexandrin in stanzas called laisses, now known in a version composed about 1180 for a courtly French audience and embedded in a quasi-historical cycle of epic poems inspired by the events of 1097–99, the climax of the First Crusade: the conquest of Antioch and of Jerusalem and the origins of the Crusader states.

The Chanson was later reworked and incorporated in an extended Crusade cycle, of the 14th century, which was far more fabulous and embroidered, more distinctly romance than epic.

Graindor borrowed details from the chroniclers to make his work more lively and more accurate, for his object from the start was to tell the true praiseworthy tale, not cozen his listeners of their coin: Such claims of truth-telling are part of the poet's epic repertory.

Crusade cycles had a wide medieval audience: free translations and versions of the Chanson d'Antioche appeared in Old Occitan, Spanish, English, Dutch, and German.

The Chanson d'Antioche was forgotten, until it was printed and published in 1848 by Alexis Paulin Paris, at the height of the Romantic Gothic Revival.