CHIVALRIC ROMANCES AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF WORLD LITERATURE

This article examines the chivalric romance as a key phenomenon of Western European medieval literature and a crucial stage in the formation of the novel as a genre within the global literary tradition. It analyzes the historical and cultural preconditions for the emergence of the genre, its thematic and poetic features, as well as its system of images and values. Particular attention is paid to the transformation of chivalric motifs during the Renaissance, the Early Modern period, and in nineteenth–twenty-first-century literature. The study concludes that the chivalric romance shaped a new model of the hero, contributed to the development of psychological depth and narrative individualization, and exerted a significant influence on the rise of both the realist and the fantasy novel.