In the last two chapters we have been concerned with two major themes of the romance, but now we must consider the way in which the narrative is organised to bring out any ironic implications of these themes. Of the countless possibilities which this opens up I shall concentrate on one central problem: the aesthetic organisation of time. This has the advantage that it has been treated by Günther Müller and his school and that it lies close to a problem which recurs in medieval rhetoric and poetics: the distinction between ordo naturalis (events are presented in the chronological sequence of their happening) and ordo artificialis (having begun in the middle or at the end, the poet narrates subsequently what came before).

Although most theoreticians distinguish between these two orders, Bernard of Utrecht concedes the possibility of combining them in the same work. There is also evidence to suggest that the natural order was associated with the veracity of religious writings and the artificial order with the fictional nature of works of art. Benson has shown that even a conventional romance, following the adventures of its hero in their temporal sequence, cannot avoid the artificial order whenever an antagonist is introduced. From the point of view of the hero (and of the audience accompanying him) this opponent is generally a stranger, entering the story from outside and in medias res, whose motives and prehistory have to be recapitulated at a later stage.