About the year 1150, five years before the death of Geoffrey, an
Anglo-Norman, Geoffrey Gaimar, wrote the first French metrical chronicle.
It consisted of two parts, the _Estorie des Bretons_ and the _Estorie des
Engles_, of which only the latter is extant, but the former is known to
have been a rhymed translation of the _Historia_ of Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Gaimar's work might possibly have had a longer life if it had not been
cast into the shade by another chronicle in verse, the _Roman de Brut_,
by a Norman poet, Wace, which fills an important and interesting place
among our Arthurian sources, not merely because of the author's qualities
as a poet and his treatment of the Arthurian story, but also because of
the type of composition that he produced. For the metrical chronicle
occupies an intermediate position between the prose chronicle, one of the
favourite forms of mediaeval monastic production throughout Europe, and
the metrical romance, which budded and blossomed most richly in France,
where, during the last half of the twelfth century, it received its
greatest impulse from Crestien de Troies, the most distinguished of the
_trouveres_. The metrical romances were written for court circles, and
were used as a vehicle for recounting adventures of love and chivalry,
and for setting forth the code of behaviour which governed the courtly
life of France at that period.
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