Medieval romance & novella: 1100-1500[edit]Romances[edit]Main article: Chivalric romance
Chaucer reciting Troilus and Criseyde: early-15th-century manuscript of the work at Corpus Christi College, CambridgeThe European tradition of the novel as the genre of extended prose fiction is rooted in the tradition of medieval "romances". Even today, most European languages make that clear by using the word roman roughly the way that English uses the word novel, which claims roots in the Italian novella.[6] Yet, epic length or the focus on a central hero giving the work its name (as in Robinson Crusoe or Oliver Twist) are features derived from the tradition of "romances". The early modern novel had preferred titles that focused on curious examples of modern life, not on heroes