The Song of Roland (Old French, La Chanson de Roland) is the oldest surviving work of French literature, dating from the late 11th century. A relatively short epic poem, having 4,000 ten-syllable verses, Roland is the closest thing to a Christian Iliad. Like the Greek epic, it was only one, though almost certainly the greatest one, of a large body of now mostly forgotten works called Chansons de Geste or "Songs of Deeds."
Plot
The plot is a wildly fictionalized version of the Battle of Roncevalles or Roncevaux Pass that was fought as Charlemagne's army left Muslim-controlled Spain in 778. In the opening scene, the Spanish king Marsile hatches a plot to end his seven-year war with Charlemagne by pretending to convert to Christianity and become his vassal. Receiving the Spanish messengers, Charlemagne and his barons debate who to send to Marsile. Our hero Roland volunteers his stepfather Ganelon, to his outrage. Ganelon goes, but conspires with Marsile to ambush the French in the narrow passes of the Pyrénées. The Spaniards fall upon the rearguard led by Roland, the other eleven paladins, and Turpin, the sword-wielding archbishop. The rearguard is slaughtered to a man, and when Charlemagne finds out, he gets medieval on the Spaniards. All looks lost for the Muslims, until the Emir arrives with an enormous fleet of troop transports. Thus, we have a family conflict, nested within a conflict between France and Spain, nested within a world war between Cross and Crescent.
Form
The poem is written in stanzas of irregular length known as laisses. The lines are decasyllabic (containing ten syllables), and each is divided by a strong caesura which generally falls after the fourth syllable. The last stressed syllable of each line in a laisse has the same vowel sound as every other end-syllable in that laisse. The laisse is therefore an assonal, not a rhyming stanza.
On a narrative level, the Song of Roland features extensive use of repetition, parallelism, and thesis-antithesis pairs. Roland proposes Ganelon for the dangerous mission to Sarrogossa; Ganelon designates Roland to man the rearguard. Charlemagne is contrasted with Baligant. Unlike later Renaissance and Romantic literature, the poem focuses on action rather than introspection. The characters are presented through what they do, not through what they think or feel.
Historical reference
The Song of Roland more or less ignores this history, depicting instead a Charlemagne capable of conquering all of Spain. The account is legend. Roland, instead of being "Lord of the Breton March," as detailed by Einhard, is a Frankish lord and Charlemagne's own nephew. The "treachery" of the Christian Basques becomes transformed into the treachery of a single man, Ganelon, and the Basques themselves are replaced by Moslems, whom the poet calls Saracens or pagans. The battles are epic and grand, worthy of intervention by God himself, and historical ambiguities or defeats are ignored.
The spirit is very much that of the Crusades, a period in which the Catholic Church had become strong and ambitious enough to mount a series of determined campaigns in the Holy Land. Centuries had passed since the time of Charlemagne, and if anything history had magnified his persona. He was one of the first great Christian kings, and his legacy was part of what later made the Crusades possible. The poem describes what was impossible for Charlemagne but what would be possible during the Crusades: conquest of fabulously rich Moslem lands. In 1095, Pope Urban II gave a famous speech at the council of Clermont, exhorting all Christians to fight for the recapture of the land of Christ. Warriors who fought for the Holy Land would receive full penance. Archbishop Turpin, the fierce warrior-priest of the poem, reflects this new mentality. He blesses and gives penance to the Franks wholesale before the battle, and promises all that paradise awaits them. The poem also uses Charlemagne and the nobility of his persona, his supposed personal relationship with God, and his reception of divine messages from angels. The poet has no qualms about changing facts to fit in with the spirit of the new Holy Wars.
Themes
Good and Evil
The Song of Roland gives us Good vs. Evil, pure and simple, Star Wars style. The horror of war is not intensified by ambiguous moral justifications, as in Homer's Iliad, nor are heroes deterred by compassion for the enemy, as in the Mahabharata. War is great, even glamorous. The cost is heavy, but only for the heroes. Villains deserve neither compassion nor grief. The Franks represent pure Good; they are moved by the will of God. The Saracens are evil, and on dying their souls are dragged down to hell by devils. Just like the Crusades, the war in The Song of Roland is seen as a holy mission.
Loyalty and Vassalage
Heroism in the poem is based on feudal ideas. Even the pagans in the poem can be considered heroic, when they are evaluated in terms of loyalty and vassalage. The feudal system linked lords and vassals with a series of obligations and loyalties. A vassal gave his total loyalty in exchange for protection and vengeance should the vassal be killed in service of his lord. In The Song of Roland, vassalage is depicted as parallel to Christianity. Roland's ultimate liege lord is God, and it is in serving Charlemagne that Roland fulfills his duties as a Christian.
The Benevolent God
God is all-powerful. God is all-good. These two statements are assumptions for the medieval mind. Characters in The Song of Roland assume that God will intervene in events; it seems perfectly reasonable to believe, for example, that deciding the verdict at Ganelon's trial should be done by combat, because God will supposedly aid the man in the right.
And yet, paradoxically, evil things happen. The poem manages to turn these events into part of God's plan. See the analysis of the seventh section of the poem for further discussion of this topic.
The Will of God and Man's Place
God commands, and Man acts. Although humans sometimes need divine aid to carry out God's plans, much of the hard work is left to men like Charlemagne. Faith in an all-powerful and benevolent God does not mean that we can be complacent. Part of God's plan is to have men carry out his wishes for him. God provides help, but it is in fighting for good that man achieves new heights of greatness.
Duty
Closely connected to the themes of vassalage and the will of God and man's place, duty is one of the key values of the poem. It is for duty, not love of war, that Charlemagne continues to battle against the forces of Islam. It is out of a sense of duty that Roland fights to the death at Rencesvals. Duty causes Charlemagne to avenge Roland's death. In the poem, duty is often linked to love. The bonds between Charlemagne and Roland, or between Roland and his men, are marked by deep respect and affection. Duty arises spontaneously from this love, or should, just as unquestioning duty follows naturally from the sublime love of God.
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