Although Arthurian romances were popular in the Middle Ages, few records depict actual circumstances of their performance. Le roman du Hem, which presents itself as an eyewitness account of a tournament at Le Hem in 1278, is therefore an invaluable document, for it describes five interludes based on characters and motifs of Arthurian romance. These interludes are entertainments presented during the festive banquet and at intervals between the jousts. In them, storytelling shifts towards dramatic enactments where those attending the tournament play scenes derived from Arthurian romance. There are allusions to Arthurian themes in tournaments beginning in the early thirteenth century. Le roman du Hem, however, provides that which we lack for much of medieval performance of narrative: a richly detailed description of circumstances and contents of performance and the responses of participants and spectators.

Le roman du Hem is a romance-length poem of some 4600 verses composed in 1278 by a poet named Sarrasin. Sarrasin says his book was commissioned by “la roïne Genievre” (line 373) [Queen Guinevere], referring to the sister of Aubert de Longueval, the lord whose domains lay near Le Hem and who organized the tournament with his neighbor Huart de Bazentin. It is one of the first known examples of the French festival books written to commemorate courtly celebrations in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is also (with Jacques Bretel's Tournoi de Chauvency of 1285) one of the earliest extended accounts of a historical chivalric festivity in France, although descriptions of tournaments are common features of romances.

Le roman du Hem narrates the events of a tournament which included jousting (running courses to break lances) but not the kind of open-field mêlée encounter between two sword-wielding teams that was prohibited at that time by the French king. It was held on the feast of Saint Denis, 8–10 October, 1278 at Le Hem in Picardy, a tiny village on the Somme River, which was the scene of fierce fighting in the First World War. Now fishermen sit quietly along a bend in the river next to fields which must have been filled with the tents, horses, wagons, and households of the hundreds of persons who rode across northeastern France and Flanders to participate in three days of jousting and feasting.