Much of the criticism surrounding the three romances of Chrétien de Troyes in relation to their Middle Welsh counterparts has concerned itself with according precedence to one text over the other. The similarity of plot in the three pairs of texts has encouraged this trend, and the texts are often compared with little concern for the fact that Chrétien's romances and the Middle Welsh tales belong to very different literary traditions. Chrétien de Troyes' Erec et Enide, Le Conte du graal (Perceval) and Le Chevalier au lion (Yvain), composed in the last quarter of the twelfth century, belong to a continental tradition of romance. Their Middle Welsh counterparts, Gereint, Peredur and Owein, on the other hand, display the characteristic features of a Middle Welsh prose tradition. The three Middle Welsh tales, of uncertain authorship, have traditionally been referred to as ‘the three romances’ because of their connection with their French counterparts, a designation which overlooks this generic difference. The ongoing debate, the Mabinogionfrage, has been especially concerned with the romance of Erec et Enide and the Welsh Gereint, being the most similar pair. The most obvious difference between the Old French romances and their Middle Welsh counterparts is stylistic: Chrétien's tales are written in octosyllabic rhyming couplets, whereas the Welsh narratives are in prose.