Song of Roland

The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland) is an Old French epic of about 4,000 lines, composed around 1100 by an author the surviving text names as Turoldus, whose identity is unknown. The best manuscript, kept in Oxford, was copied in England in the 12th century. The poem tells of Charlemagne's return from Spain, where the rear guard under his nephew Roland is ambushed at the pass of Roncevaux by a Saracen army after the treachery of Roland's stepfather, Ganelon. Roland, proud, delays blowing his horn, the olifant, to call for help until nearly all are dead, and then dies on the field, with his sword Durendal beside him.¹

The real event is a minor one: in 778, a Basque force destroyed the rear of Charlemagne's army in the Pyrenees, as the chronicler Einhard records, naming a Roland who commanded the Breton March. The poem turns this into a holy war between Christians and Muslims, which fits the era of the First Crusade and the Spanish Reconquista. It is composed in laisses, groups of lines that share a final vowel sound, and has the formulaic style of oral poetry. Charlemagne's long revenge and the trial of Ganelon follow. A later chronicler says that a minstrel sang about Roland to the Norman army before Hastings in 1066.¹²

The Song of Roland became the model of the chanson de geste, a genre of heroic epic. It was translated and reworked across Europe, in the German Rolandslied, the Italian Orlando Furioso of Ariosto, and many others.³