Used book – The Song of Roland, Anonymous

The "Lettres gothiques" collection aims to provide the widest possible audience with direct, easy, and reliable access to medieval literature.

Direct access is ensured by presenting the original text to the reader, easy access by offering a modern French translation alongside it, an introduction, and numerous notes. Reliable access is guaranteed by the care taken in presenting the text and its commentary. The "Lettres gothiques" collection thus offers a representative overview of medieval literature as a whole.

The Song of Roland is the first great French literary text, the one that forever etched Roland's death at Roncevaux into memory. Composed, as we know it, at the end of the 11th century, it is the oldest, most illustrious, and most beautiful of the chansons de geste, those epic poems sung that all set their action three centuries earlier, in the Carolingian era, under the reign of Charlemagne or his son. The Song of Roland is a poem of harsh grandeur, dense and profound, playing with sober power on its resonances and echoes. The edition and translation provided here by Ian Short are both new.