Raoul de Cambrai

Download or read book Raoul de Cambrai written by Sarah Kay and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raoul de Cambrai is one of the most violent and passionate Old French poems of the cycle of barons in revolt. The three relations that structure medieval society - companionship, feudalism, and the family - are here seen in crisis. Conflicts of interest, and the competition for resources,result in social disintegration, wholesale loss of life, and the collapse of authority. The poem, probably composed around the turn of the thirteenth century, results from successive reworkings that weave a many-layered commentary on its own moral and political themes. This first edition for over ahundred years draws on important manuscript material unknown to the text's previous editors. It is prefaced by a scholarly introduction and accompanied by an annotated translation into English prose.