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The Song of Roland: Difference between revisions
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'''''The Song of Roland''''' (Old French, ''La Chanson de Roland'') is the oldest surviving work of French literature, dating from [[The High Middle Ages|the late 11th century]]. Taillefer, William the Conqueror's minstrel, charged into battle at Hastings singing a version of it, and if you read the version we have, you can definitely see how it would get the soldiers' blood pumping. A relatively short epic poem, having 4,000 ten-syllable verses, ''Roland'' is the closest thing to a Christian ''[[The Iliad|Iliad]]''. Like the Greek epic, it was only one, though almost certainly the greatest one, of a large body of now mostly forgotten works<ref>''e.g., The Song of William'' or ''The Four Sons of Aymon''</ref>, called in this case the ''Chansons de Geste'' or "Songs of Deeds." Its influence was enormous, and adaptations soon appeared in several European languages such as Latin, Occitan, and Middle High German.
Technically, the poem is written in ten-syllable lines, with strong pauses in the middle of each, and ending in assonances (or what might seem to us "bad rhymes"). Lines are divided into stanzas (or ''laisses'') of no fixed length. The language of the poem is Old French, ''i.e.'', the language spoken in the Northern half of what is now [[
{{quote| ''Carles li reis, nostre emper[er]e magnes''<br />
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