The Compositional Making and Geographic Itinerancies of the Chansons de Roland During the Early and Late Middle Ages

Abstract

The author examines the centripetal compositional forces and the itinerant centrifugal forces that produced the Chanson de Roland and diffused the Chansons de Roland since its remote Nordico-Germanic and Gallo-Roman origins to their wide-scale geographic settlings in western mediaeval Europe. To demonstrate this dual force, the author traces the Figure of a sand-glass which visualizes the first migrating compositional flow from the wide plains of Scandinavia, through sedentarized Gaul and on to the battlefield of Roncevaux Pass, and the second propagating flow from the oldest extant Oxford version to the eight variants which, although scattered over different countries, are very much inter-related since they all drew inspiration from Roland's heroic death at the eventful battle of Roncevaux. The nine versions of the Chanson de Roland founded the mediaeval western European poetic koine.