Chansons de geste

The chansons de geste, Old French for "songs of heroic deeds [or heroic lineages]", are the epic poetry that appears at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known examples date from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, nearly a hundred years before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the trouvères (troubadours) and the earliest verse romances.
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Noun
1. Old French epic poems
(hypernym) epic poem, heroic poem, epic, epos

Old French epic poetry, averaging about 3900 lines, in ten-syllable verse. They glorified the Franks, the Christian religion, and a few of the famous Carolingian knights . Thought much of the subject matter was legendary, they were extraordinarily popular; many believed them to be historical. They remained powerful testaments to the ingenuity and sincerity.