Founder's text, La Chanson de Roland by the clergyman Tudold, was initially a crusade poem: deeply imbued with the dreams and prejudices of the nobles fighting in Spain around Zaragoza. This famous chanson de geste was intended to strengthen the enthusiasm for the holy war among an audience alarmed by the Saracen threat. The work also reflects the conflicts and tensions of feudal society—between right and justice, service to the lord and self-aggrandizement, defense of the faith and loyalty to the vassalage. It also serves as a vehicle for the glorification of family ties (between Charlemagne and his nephew Roland), military skill (between Roland and Olivier), or love affairs (between Roland and Aude). But the fiction transcends history: raw, violent, and intense in its expression of feeling, it imbues the heroic figures with a true poetic reality, making this masterpiece one of the most sublime expressions of the creative movement that animated the medieval world at the time. Provided with a presentation, translation, notes and bibliography by Jean Dufournet.