Abstract

The romance customarily termed “classical” occupies a special place within Cambodian literature as a whole. The term betrays a certain Eurocentrism and is justified only because the written language of this type of text is neither the old Khmer of epigraphic inscriptions, nor modern Khmer, but the form of the language known as “middle Khmer,” which in theory designates the period from the fourteenth century through the end of the nineteenth century, and of which we have written records from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the romances as we know them. While these romances share one significant feature with Khmer literature as a whole, they are distinguished by other characteristics that are peculiar to them.