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costume_man's review against another edition
2.0
Bien que l'intrigue soit vraiment intéressante au début, dès que les scènes de bataille commencent le récit s'enferme dans une sorte de boucle où chaque action se répète, mais avec des personnes différents. Passé la surprise de la description incroyablement violente de la mort des Sarrasins, la lecture de cette chanson de Geste devient assez ennuyeuse.
cathaldon1's review against another edition
4.0
Yes, you list every single man in France and Spain then suffix this list with ‘and they were cool as shit and they’re dead as fuck,’ you can in fact convince the reader that they were cool as shit. Great read.
lapsedmarxist's review
4.0
them high middle ages poets sure could write a wicked good ‘chanson de geste.’ a classic tale/story of good vs evil. who is good and who is evil is relative and up to you to decide, at least as far as i am concerned. it also goes without saying that this tale is not for the faint of heart. gory and proper gruesome. moreover, the tale is not without its accidental/unintentional funny bits. more than once, Roland et al proudly proclaim ‘the pagans are wrong and the christians are right.’ which was almost always quickly followed by ‘no dishonorable tale will ever be told about us.’ hard not to at least chortle. but yeah. rip Roland. gone but never forgotten.
casparb's review against another edition
3.0
A peculiar endeavour but interesting. Much prefer it to the highly repetitive Morte D'Arthur (at least, the 800+page one. Sure there are better Arthurian texts). Roland is repetitive in such a way that could possibly grate upon the modern reader, but the brevity of the three stories is such that it doesn't ruin the experience as a whole.
Roland himself is rather Achillean in the first narrative - the titular Song. Plenty of the battle scenes seem to owe something to the Iliad or Aeneid but perhaps that's just how one thought of battles at the time. Also Biblical things happening - Books of Samuel are useful. Daniel too. I've been going over the Bible lately anyway so just happened to notice.
An awful lot of tonal variation between the three stories too! The last narrative, wherein Charlemagne et al go to Jerusalem is Pythonesque - wonderfully so. The boasting scene is an all timer.
Anyway! I think this will be a divisive one, but it's highly accessible and at times quite fun. Certainly a major achievement of its era.
Roland himself is rather Achillean in the first narrative - the titular Song. Plenty of the battle scenes seem to owe something to the Iliad or Aeneid but perhaps that's just how one thought of battles at the time. Also Biblical things happening - Books of Samuel are useful. Daniel too. I've been going over the Bible lately anyway so just happened to notice.
An awful lot of tonal variation between the three stories too! The last narrative, wherein Charlemagne et al go to Jerusalem is Pythonesque - wonderfully so. The boasting scene is an all timer.
Anyway! I think this will be a divisive one, but it's highly accessible and at times quite fun. Certainly a major achievement of its era.
bored_and_confused's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
1.25
audryt's review against another edition
2.0
Thank God our species has evolved since this was written. Not by much, but thank God anyway.