The epigraph to the Introduction quotes William Rees-Mogg, “We live in an age which has tried excessively hard to eliminate absolute rules.” Marianne Ailes does an admirable job of making The Song of Roland relevant to our times and our relativistic society.

One of the strengths of this work is that it refutes many of the ill-considered conclusions expressed by George Jones in The Ethos of the Song of Roland, published in 1963. For example, in the first chapter, Ailes describes how heroic values, feudal values, and Christian values can exist simultaneously in the medieval mind and medieval text. Ailes makes this argument and others with detailed analysis of the text and the actions and speeches of the characters, along with the ability to concisely explain the medieval context to a modern reader.

I recommend this book to anyone coming to The Song of Roland for the first time, as well as someone reacquainting themselves with the text after a long absence. ( )