SOURCE: Zimroth, E. “Grace and Free Will in the Chanson de Roland.” Essays in French Literature, no. 9 (November 1973): 1-13.

In the following essay, Zimroth analyzes the interrelationship in The Song of Roland between predeterminism, free will, and divine grace.

The larger picture of the Chanson de Roland is of a world rigidly circumscribed by divine preordination. The epic seems to illustrate the assumption that there exists a divine plan to be fulfilled in the future; the course of history here is predetermined by God so that with the progression of time, God's will is made apparent. That portion of the divine plan dramatized in the epic is the polarity between Saracen and Christian, an easy polarity in the sense that it gives rise to an unambiguous relationship between right and wrong, winning and losing. God naturally is on the side of His people and therefore He can and...