La Chanson de Roland is the oldest surviving major work of French literature, composed around the late eleventh century by an unknown author and set during the time of Charlemagne. It recounts the heroic last stand of the paladin Roland against a Moorish army at the pass of Roncevaux in the Pyrenees — a story of loyalty, courage, and the medieval values of feudal honor.
This English translation is based on Léon Gautier’s authoritative nineteenth-century edition of the Oxford manuscript. Download this foundational public-domain epic as a free EPUB.