Little is know about the anonymous author or authors of the Song of Roland. The oldest surviving manuscript, the Oxford Digby 23, is signed "Turoldus" and written in Anglo-Norman, a language predominant in England following the Norman invasion from France in 1066. Few people outside the clergy in medieval France and England were literate, so Turoldus may have been a monk. One school of thought argues that the tale shows signs of being composed orally, perhaps copied down by Turoldus and other scribes when the story was performed at a feast or celebration. The extent to which the text's first scribes might have added then- own creative touches to the story is not known, but scribes are generally considered to be recorders of traditional tales, and notauthors of original ones.

Another theory maintains that the legend, existing from the time of Charlemagne, was put into poetic form by...