PEPIN THE SHORT had done a great deal to unite the kingdom; but when he died, he left it to his two sons, and so divided it again. The older son died in a few years; and now the kingdom of the Franks was in the hands of Charlemagne, if he could hold it. First came trouble with the Saxons who lived about the lower Rhine and the Elbe. They and the Franks were both Germans, but the Franks had had much to do with the Romans, and had learned many of their ways. Missionaries, too, had dwelt among them and had taught them Christianity, while the Saxons were still heathen. It was fully thirty years before the Saxons were subdued. During those years, Charlemagne watched them closely. He fought, to be sure, whenever they rebelled, and he made some severe laws and saw to it that these were obeyed. More than this, however, he sent missionaries to them, and he built churches. He carried away many Saxon boys as hostages. These boys were carefully brought up and were taught Christianity. They learned to like the Frankish ways of living, and when they had grown up and were sent home, they urged their friends to yield and become peaceful subjects of the great king; and finally the land of the Saxons became a part of the Frankish kingdom. Charlemagne had only begun the Saxon war, when the Pope asked for help against the Lombards, a tribe of Teutons who had settled in Northern Italy. The king was quite ready to give it, for he, too, had a quarrel with them; and in a year or two their ruler had been shut up in a monastery and Charlemagne had been crowned with the old iron crown of Lombardy. This war had hardly come to an end before the king led his troops into Spain against the Mohammedans. There, too, he was successful; but at Roncesvalles he lost a favourite follower, Count Roland. Roland and the warriors who perished with him were so young and brave that the Franks never wearied of recounting their noble deeds. Later the story was put into a fine poem, called the "Song of Roland," which long afterward men sang as they dashed into battle.

De los cantares de gesta, con las hazañas de Roldán y Guillermo de Orange, donde se funden mito e Historia, a los cuentos populares, donde encontramos humor e ironía, pero también consejos morales, pasando por la literatura satírica de El «Roman de Renart» y los cuentos de amor cortés, he aquí un completo recorrido por la cuentística medieval europea.

ANTONIO RIVERO TARAVILLO (Melilla, 1963) cursó Filología Inglesa en la Universidad de Sevilla, y amplió estudios en la de Edimburgo. Ha colaborado con poemas, traducciones y artículos en las revistas Clarín, Sibila, Con dados de niebla, Reloj de arena, Renacimiento, Turia y Letras libres, entre otras. Ha publicado una recopilación de artículos de viajes, Las ciudades del hombre, y tiene en prensa Viaje sentimental por Inglaterra. Es autor de los poemarios Farewell to Poesy y El árbol de la vida. Ha traducido novelas de Flann O ́Brien y Jaime O ́Neill, y es también autor de versiones de Ezra Pound, Alfred Tennyson, William Shakespeare, Robert Graves y John Keats (Premio Andaluz a la Traducción Literaria y Ensayística, 2005), así como de las antologías Antiguos poemas irlandeses y Canciones gaélicas. Ganó el Premio Archivo Hispalense 2005, en la modalidad de Literatura, con su ensayo Con otro acento: divagaciones sobre el Cernuda "inglés".

Magicians, necromancers and astrologers are assiduous characters in the European golden age theatre. This book deals with dramatic characters who act as physiognomists or palm readers in the fictional world and analyses the fictionalisation of physiognomic lore as a practice of divination in early modern Romance theatre from Pietro Aretino and Giordano Bruno to Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca and Thomas Corneille.

In Culture and Society in Medieval Galicia, twenty-three international authors examine Galicia’s changing place in Iberia, Europe, and the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds from late antiquity through the thirteenth century. With articles on art and architecture; religion and the church; law and society; politics and historiography; language and literature; and learning and textual culture, the authors introduce medieval Galicia and current research on the region to medievalists, Hispanists, and students of regional culture and society. The cult of St. James, Santiago Cathedral, and the pilgrimage to Compostela are highlighted and contextualized to show how Galicia’s remoteness became the basis for a paradoxical centrality in medieval art, culture, and religion. Contributors are Jeffrey A. Bowman, Manuel Castiñeiras, James D'Emilio, Thomas Deswarte, Pablo C. Díaz, Emma Falque, Amélia P. Hutchinson, Amancio Isla, Henrik Karge, Melissa R. Katz, Michael Kulikowski, Fernando López Sánchez, Luis R. Menéndez Bueyes, William D. Paden, Francisco Javier Pérez Rodríguez, Ermelindo Portela, Rocío Sánchez Ameijeiras, Adeline Rucquoi, Ana Suárez González, Purificación Ubric, Ramón Villares, John Williams †, and Roger Wright.