I will be direct. We did not assign the Song of Roland. We did not assign it because epics lie like beautiful paintings: they look like truth, but they are art. The student read other medieval literature — the Mabinogion, the lais of Marie de France, and Chrétien de Troyes — to learn how stories were told in different places and voices. That was intentional. We wanted training in careful reading and history, not fancy myth-making.
What we studied instead was the historical incident behind the legend: the ambush at Roncevaux Pass in 778, and the Frankish sources about Charlemagne's campaign in Spain. This is simple. In 778 Charlemagne led an army into northern Spain. On the way home, the rearguard was attacked at Roncevaux. Men died. Leaders died. The attackers were local Basque fighters defending their mountain passes, not an army of distant Saracens. The contemporary records — the Royal Frankish Annals and other near-contemporary chronicles — give a short, stark account. They report a military setback. They do not decorate the rearguard with supernatural glory. They do not invent a vast Muslim force. They do not make Roland a martyr-hero with a magical sword.
Why does this matter? Because the Song of Roland, written centuries later, transforms that local ambush into a grand Christian versus Muslim battle. It makes Roland a saintly hero, it gives him a horn and a miracle sword, and it turns political memory into crusading myth. That transformation happened in a very different time — when Europeans were fighting in Iberia and the Crusades were reshaping how people thought about enemies and holiness. The poem reflects its own politics and its own imagination. It is brilliant literature. It is not straightforward history.
The student practiced distinguishing sources. We read the short chronicle passages. We read modern historians who explain the geography of Roncevaux and the motives of local fighters. We compared those sober accounts with poetic features found in epic songs. We asked: who wrote this down, and when? Who benefits from the story told one way rather than another? Those are the right questions for a young historian.
We also used the Mabinogion, Marie de France, and Chrétien to show variety. Epic is not the only medieval voice. Welsh myth, Anglo-Norman lais, and Arthurian romance teach different techniques of storytelling, audience, and purpose. By studying variety, the student learned to spot invention and to respect source limits.
In short: we avoided the misleading misattributions of the Song of Roland on purpose. We did not avoid poetry — we studied many poems and romances — but we insisted on context first. The student learned the real 778 event, the nature of the contemporary records, and why the later epic reshaped that event. That is disciplined reading. That is good scholarship. That is what we demanded, and the student delivered.