"This book presents the first modern English translation of the twelfth-century "Chronicle of Pseudo-Turpin," a work, part history and part "chanson de geste," concerning Charlemagne and the Crusade in Spain, with particular reference to St. James and Compostela, and including preface, introduction, notes, glossary, bibliography and index"--

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

This unique Middle English text, not previously published, of the immensely popular story of Charlemagne's Spanish wars and defeat at Roncevaux, has only recently been discovered. It is one of the earliest prose romances, pre-dating Sir Thomas Malory's Morte D'Artur by more than a decade. This version testifies to a distinctive British tradition of the Charlemagne story. The manuscript's history locates the text in Lancastrian and regional politics of the mid-fifteenth century.

"Reading Spiegel's book is like seeing the scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle of history and literature suddenly assembled in a dazzling new image, a picture that could not have been made without the master piece, the manuscript that Professor Spiegel was the first person in almost 800 years to read and interpret. Her effort is a tour de force of no mean proportion."--Stephen G. Nichols Jr., author of Romanesque Signs

Originally published in 1993, The Medieval Charlemagne Legend is a selective bibliography for the literary scholar, of historical and literary material relating to Charlemagne. The book provides a chronological listing of sources on the legend and man is split into three distinct sections, covering the history of Charlemagne, the literature of Charlemagne and the medieval biography and chronicle of Charlemagne.

The first full-length examination of the medieval Charlemagne tradition in the literature and culture of medieval England, from the Chanson de Roland to Caxton. The Matter of France, the legendary history of Charlemagne, had a central but now largely unrecognised place in the multilingual culture of medieval England. From the early claim in the Chanson de Roland that Charlemagne held England as his personal domain, to the later proliferation of Middle English romances of Charlemagne, the materials are woven into the insular political and cultural imagination. However, unlike the wide range of continental French romances, the insular tradition concentrates on stories of a few heroic characters: Roland, Fierabras, Otinel. Why did writers and audiences in England turn again and again to these narratives, rewriting and reinterpreting them for more than two hundred years? This book offers the first full-length, in-depth study of the tradition as manifested in literature and culture. It investigates the currency and impact of the Matter of France with equal attention to English and French-language texts, setting each individual manuscript or early printed text in its contemporary cultural and political context. The narratives are revealed to be extraordinarily adaptable, using the iconic opposition between Carolingian and Saracen heroes to reflect concerns with national politics, religious identity, the future of Christendom, chivalry and ethics, and monarchy and treason. PHILLIPA HARDMAN is Readerin Medieval English Literature (retired) at the University of Reading; MARIANNE AILES is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Bristol.