The romance, the major secular genre for three hundred years, stands to medieval literature as the novel stands to the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mr. Stevens stresses, especially in his introductory chapters, the continuity between medieval and later literature. The subjects of medieval romance are the great and permanent concerns of the human mind--man loving, man fighting, man alone, man with his lover, his leader, or friends, man facing mystery, or death, man seeking God.

John Stevens' book examines the complex interplay between lyrical and musical compositions in the courts of Henry VII and VIII.