Poetic Form and Rhyme

The Song of Roland is written in poetic form. The verse paragraphs are called laisses, and they are of varying length. The rhyming scheme is assonance, meaning that only the final stressed vowels are identical. Most lines have 10 syllables, with a break, or caesura, after the fourth syllable.

Language

The author of the Digby 23 manuscript penned this epic in Anglo-Norman. This was a form of French spoken in the region that is now England about 100 years after the Norman invasion of 1066. The story existed in oral form long before this, and the original language of the epic is unknown.

Point of View

The story is told by an omniscient, or "all-knowing," third-person narrator. The author is not involved in the story, but is very clearly on the side of the French, Authorial asides criticize the treachery of Ganelon or the frighrfulness of the Saracens, for...