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Books > History > World history > 500 to 1500
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The Song of Roland (Paperback)
Loot Price: R398
Discovery Miles 3 980
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The Song of Roland (Paperback)
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Loot Price R398
Discovery Miles 3 980
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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"The Song of Roland" is acknowledged today as the first masterpiece
of French vernacular literature and one of the world's greatest
epic poems. The earliest extant example of a medieval "chanson de
geste" ("song of deeds"), its four thousand lines represent the
most famous literary celebration of Carolingian mythology from the
Middle Ages. Written down around the year 1090, the Song of
Roland's finely crafted verses tell of the betrayal and defeat of
Charlemagne's beloved nephew at the Pass of Roncevaux in the
Pyrenees and of the revenge subsequently sought on his behalf.
Although the identity of the surviving work's author cannot be
known with certainty, his poetic genius cannot be doubted. His
mastery of chanson de geste compositional techniques transformed an
historically minor military setback - the ambush and slaughter of
the great emperor's rearguard by a band of Basque highlanders in
August 778 - into the most immediately popular and subsequently
cherished artistic expression of medieval chivalry, kingship,
national pride, feudal and Christian service in the Western world.
Michael Newth's new verse translation of the "Chanson de Roland" -
the first in English for over fifty years to preserve the full
poetic diction of the medieval composition - recaptures the form,
feel and flow of the original work in performance by restoring the
genre's "verbal music" to the *Song* of Roland. Newth's
introduction traces the extant work's origins, examines its
artistic achievements and summarizes its enormous influence on the
social and artistic consciousness of medieval France and beyond.
His text is followed by a glossary of medieval terms used in the
translation and suggestions for further reading about the Roland
phenomenon and its surviving one hundred or so fellow chansons de
geste. This translation of the "Chanson de Roland" meets the need
for a new version of the great poem to illustrate its relevance and
widen its appeal to English readers of the twenty-first century,
and it also highlights its potential as a viable piece of
performance art.
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