The Sense of the Song of Roland

by Robert Francis Cook

Cook, Robert Francis

Genres: History

266 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1987

Reviews

[Stephen Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

What Tolkien did for Beowulf in “The Monsters and the Critics,” Cook does here for Roland, advocating that the epic be approached on its own terms. Through his analysis, one comes to better understand not only the Roland, but the medieval ethos itself, and in a way that reveals and excises our most unhelpful modern biases — including but not limited to 1) our internalizing of Freudian psychological categories, 2) our belief that survival alone is the greatest good, and 3) our allergies to ancient mores and heroic commitments that strike us as uncomfortable simply because they demand that we turn our gazes outward to horizons that extend beyond self. As Cook succinctly notes towards the end, “There is no surprise that the past can speak to us, once we have stopped talking to ourselves.”

[Winnie Thornton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book on Roland I've come across yet.