The Chanson de Roland contains allusions to many events out side the narrative, some of which refer to chansons which are lost. Roland was variously represented by the romancers as the son of Charlemagne's sister Gilles or Berte and the knight Milon d'Anglers. The romantic episode of the reconciliation of the pair with Charlemagne through Roland's childish prattle (Berte et Milon) is probably foreign to the original legend. His enfances, or youthful exploits, were, according to Aspremont, performed in Italy against the giant Eaumont, but in Girais de Viane his first taste of battle is under the walls of Vienne, where Oliver, at first his adversary, becomes his brother-in-arms.
In the I 2th century the Chanson de Roland was modernized by replacing the assonance by rhyme. Several mss. of this rhymed recension, sometimes known as Roncevaux, are pre served. The English romances of Charlemagne (q.v.) are mostly derived from late and inferior sources. It was in Italy that the Roland legend had its greatest fortune ; Charlemagne and Roland appear in the Paradiso (canto xviii.) of Dante ; the statues of Roland and Oliver appear on the doorway of the cathedral of Verona; and the French chansons de geste regular ly appeared in a corrupt Italianized French.
of the enormous literature of the subject, see Leon Gautier, Les Epopees francaises (2nd vol. iii. 188o) and the same author's Bibliog raphie des chansons de geste (1897). See also P. Boissonade, Du Nouveau sur le Chanson de Roland (1923). Among critical editions of the Chanson are those by Wendelin Foerster in the Altfranz. Biblio tek, vols. vi. and vii. (Heilbronn, 1883-86), and by E. Stengel Das altfranzosische Rolandslied (Leipzig, 19oo, etc.). The most popular edition is La Chanson de Roland (Tours, 1872, and numerous subse quent editions) , by Leon Gautier. L. Petit de Julleville published in 1878 an edition with the old French text, and a modern French translation in assonanced verse. There are English translations in prose by I. Butler (Boston, Mass., 1904) ; in verse by A. Way and F. Spencer (1895) ; and "in the original measure" by C. S. Moncrieff (1919). Consult further G. Paris, Hist. poet. de Charlemagne (reprint, 1905), and De Pseudo Turpino (Paris, 1865) ; P. Rajna, Le Origini dell 'epopea francese (Florence, 5884) and Le Fonti dell' Orlando Furioso (2nd ed. Florence, 190o) ; F. Picco, Rolando nella storia e nella poesia (Turin, 1900 ; G. Paris, "Roncevaux," in Legendes du moyen age (5903), on the topography of the battlefield.