roncesvaux

Updated: May 18, 2025

Every student of poetry may make the comparison for himself, and decide for himself whether the old or the new is better. Again, in the final fight and massacre in the hall of Atli, I cannot but prefer the Slaying of the Wooers, at the close of the "Odyssey," or the last fight of Roland at Roncesvaux, or the prose version of the "Volsunga."

Andrew Lang - Adventures Among Books

The epics of France of the eleventh and twelfth centuries dwell, not on the real victories of the remote Charlemagne so much as on the disasters of Aliscans and Roncesvaux defeats at Saracen hands, Saracens being the enemies of the twelfth-century poets. The human figure is designed as in Tommy Traddles's skeletons; there is, however, some crude but promising idea of composition.

Andrew Lang - Homer and His Age