The Song of Roland and Other Poems of Charlemagne (Oxford World's Classics)

Born from the historical defeat of Charlemagne’s rearguard at Roncevaux in 778, The Song of Roland transformed a frontier ambush into one of the defining heroic legends of the European Middle Ages. The poem centres on Roland’s doomed resistance and explores loyalty, courage, kingship, warfare and religious identity through the heightened values of medieval epic.

This Oxford World’s Classics volume, translated and edited by Simon Gaunt and Karen Pratt, places Roland alongside two other medieval French works about Charlemagne: Daurel and Beton, which presents a far less admirable monarch, and the comic Journey of Charlemagne to Jerusalem and Constantinople. Together they reveal how flexible the Charlemagne legend could be across medieval literary traditions. The edition includes an introduction, notes, maps, glossary, bibliography and index, making it particularly useful for readers approaching medieval French epic in translation.