The Song of Roland

The Song of Roland is an Old French epic poem, a chanson de geste whose earliest surviving version was composed around 1040 CE with further additions and revisions made through about 1115. The poem is loosely based on the historical Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778, in which the rearguard of Charlemagne's army was destroyed while withdrawing from Spain, though the poem transforms the historical Basque attackers into a vast Muslim army and recasts the episode as a story of Christian martyrdom and feudal loyalty. In the poem, the treacherous knight Ganelon, resentful of his stepson Roland, arranges for the rearguard, led by Roland and his companion Oliver, to be ambushed at Roncevaux by overwhelming enemy forces; Roland's pride leads him to delay sounding his horn to summon help until it is too late for Charlemagne's main army to save him, and he dies of his wounds after the rearguard is annihilated, prompting Charlemagne to return, avenge his fallen knights and see Ganelon tried and executed for treason. Written in Old French assonanced verse divided into stanzas called laisses, the poem is considered the oldest surviving major work of French literature and the first and most celebrated example of the chanson de geste genre, and its account of Roland's death and Charlemagne's vengeance was hugely popular across medieval and Renaissance Europe.