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How did medieval romances give Romanticism its name?

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“The Tyger,” anastatic print by William Blake — Romantic literature English Romantic poet and artist William Blake wrote and illustrated “The Tyger” and other poems in his book *Songs of Innocence and of Experience* (1794).

The Romantic movement derives its name from the medieval romance, a literary genre that flourished in the Middle Ages.1

During the mid-18th century, a growing appreciation for these medieval tales—which featured chivalric adventure, individual heroism, and elements of the exotic and mysterious—emerged as a key trend in Pre-Romanticism. This interest stood in direct contrast to the elegant formality, artificiality, and rationalism of the prevailing Neoclassical literary forms of the time.12

The term itself traces back to the Old French word romanz, which originally referred to works written in the vernacular "vulgar tongue" rather than literary Latin. Over time, the meaning shifted from the language of the text to the narrative composition itself. By embracing the "unsophisticated" and overtly emotional qualities found in these historical chivalric tales, the Romantic movement adopted the name to signal its own rejection of Enlightenment rationalism in favor of imagination, individual passion, and subjective experience.321