Song of Roland
The Song of Roland () is an 11th-century based on the Frankish military leader Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in AD 778, during the reign of the Carolingian king Charlemagne. It is the oldest surviving major work of French literature. It exists in various manuscript versions, which testify to its enormous and enduring popularity in Medieval and Renaissance literature from the 12th to 16th centuries. The epic poem written in Old French is the first and one of the most outstanding examples of the , a literary form that flourished between the 11th and 16th centuries in Medieval Europe and celebrated legendary deeds. The date of composition is put in the period between 1040 AD and 1115 AD; an early version began around 1040 AD with additions and alterations made up until about 1115 AD. The final text contains about 4,000 lines of poetry. Manuscripts and dating Although set in the Carolingian era, the Song of Roland was written much later. There is a single extant manuscript of the Song of Roland in Old French, held at the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It dates between 1129 and 1165 and was written in Anglo-Norman. There are eight additional manuscripts and three fragments of other poems on the subject of Roland. Scholars estimate that the poem was written between approximately 1040 and 1115—possibly by a poet named Turold (Turoldus in the manuscript itself)—and that most of the alterations were completed by about 1098. Some favor the earlier dating, which allows that the narrative was inspired by the Castilian campaigns of the 1030s and that the poem was established long enough to be a major influence in the First Crusade, (1096–1099). Others favor a later dating based on their interpretations of brief references made to events of the First Crusade. In the text, the term d'oltre mer (or l'oltremarin) occurs three times in reference to named Muslims who came from oltre mer to fight in Spain and France. Oltre mer, modern French Outremer (literally, "oversea, beyond sea, other side of the sea") is a native French term from the classical Latin roots ultra = "beyond" and mare = "sea". The name was commonly used by contemporary chroniclers to refer to the Latin Levant. The occurrence of d'oltre mer cannot reliably be interpreted as resulting from the Crusades. On the contrary, the way the term is used, referring simply to "a Muslim land", indicates that the author was writing before the Crusades. And the term was circulating in French prior to the time of the Crusades—referring to the far, or eastern, end of the Mediterranean. The bulk of the poem itself dates from before the Crusades. Still, there are a few terms where questions remain about their being late to the poem, i.e., added shortly after the first Crusade started in 1096. After two manuscripts were found in 1832 and 1835, the Song of Roland became recognized as France's national epic when an edition was published in 1837. Critical opinions Oral performance