Roland, El Cid, and an Anglo-Saxon Seafarer

More recommendations for medieval poems and their modern translations.

Today we’ll conclude the Via Mediaevalis introduction to medieval poetry by completing my list of recommended texts. Preceding essays in this series are listed below.

1. The First Language of the Soul

2. “This Book Is Called a Garden Enclosed”

3. What Fire and Sword Cannot Unmake

4. A (Modern) Reader’s Guide to Medieval Poetry

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The Song of Roland
About a hundred medieval French epics have survived, but only one is a revered masterpiece familiar to readers from many countries. The Song of Roland, a mysterious blend of history and legend that wondrously poeticizes the eighth-century Battle of Roncevaux Pass, is one of the best ways to breathe the chivalric air of a world that seems immortal in its power to stir our souls and captivate our minds. This is another poem that we do well to read slowly, in a quiet room, and maybe with a candle-hued reading lamp instead of an overpowered bulb whose merciless, probing white light reminds us where we are, and isolates us from where we imagine ourselves to be.

And there is nothing wrong with such imaginings, regardless of one’s age. The imagination need not be a place of wild fantasies or perilous escapes from reality. To imagine, from Latin imago, is simply to form images, and other sensations, inside the mind. With good literature in hand, such images unite us to things that are perfectly real, though usually separated from us by time or space.