"Reading the Song of Roland" was written to encourage readers to recognize among the obscurities, the contradictions, and the improbable hyperboles of the "Song of Roland", a number of unmistakable triumphs which will make them eager ot come to grips with the poem and its feudal world. Aside from its capacity to entertain us or to serve as an ethnological prism, the "Song of Roland" raises fascinating critical and interpretive problems that are relevant to other heroic poems and to the study of poetry as an art. "Reading the Song of Roland" discusses the poem not only as a revelation of conflicting attitudes and beliefs in the unknown poet and his contemporaries in medieval France and also as a tragic utterance which is unique because of its peculiar mode of expression. Special sections at the end of the book include pertinent chronology, a sketch of the historical event upon which the poem is supposedly based, a synopsis of critical reactions to the legend of Roland, and suggestions for further reading for those who are eager to explore this fascinating epic in more depth. -- From publisher's description.