James Baldwin points out in the foreword to The Story of Roland that he was attempting to "adapt [his narrative] to our ways of thinking, and our modern notions of propriety." Now, more than a century later, Baldwin's "modern notions of propriety" seem almost too primly proper. The brief love affairs are handled with extreme decorum, and the violence which necessarily attends the adventures of knights is treated only in a general way and never with anything approaching the stark realism sometimes found in Baldwin's medieval sources. The book does have an important religious dimension, for the crusading spirit of the Middle Ages is reflected in Charlemagne's struggle to preserve Christianity from the pagan Saracens.

Militant Christianity surfaces in the direct conflict between Christian "good guys" and non-Christian (usually Moslem) "bad guys." In this regard the book remains faithful to its medieval sources, in which Christian...