220 Reviews which gives students concise information on thehistorical and literarycontext of the Roland: an account of Charlemagne's life; the events at Rencesvals according to the chronicles; theRoland contextualized within the fieldofOld French epic and in rela tion toother versions of thepoem; and feudal relationships andmilitary organization. The contextual field is then broadened to take in the development of theRoland legend within the Italian tradition and inSpain. A topic less likely to be explored in British undergraduate courses, unless it is one dealing with reception history, is the nineteenth-century French nationalistic response to theRoland, inwhich the poem became caught up in political and social issues of the day. In general there appears to be a tendency to discuss theRoland more freely in theUnited States in relation to modern international issues and events than is likely inBritain. Problems relatingmore directly to thepoem itselfare next considered, with essays on the existence of French epic inEngland and the lack of trueAnglo-Norman epics, on the difficulties of translating the text adequately into English, with well-chosen examples by way of illustration, on the tricky issue of the relationship of text to orality, and on the importance of aspects ofmetre and the use of language. There is also an interesting insight into the broad, thematic courses inwhich theRoland may figure inAmerican universities, and the issues thatare of particular interest tohistory students (especially feudalism, militant Christianity, and Charlemagne). In fact the Roland seems rarely tobe taughton itsown in theUnited States: it isoften studied in conjunction with theBayeux Tapestry orwith other texts such asBeowull orHamlet, or evenwith Arabic writings. Some of these courses sound to be rather diffuse,with students gaining only the briefest acquaintance with theRoland itself.There is con siderable concentration on performance (one teacher gets the students to sing a laisse!) and inevitable overlap as specific scenes and questions of interpretation are discussed indifferentessays. Thus Roland's behaviour isvariously interpreted in the twohorn scenes (is he, or is he not, guilty of desmesure?),while his death scene, the Baligant episode, and Ganelon's trialarewidely examined. Finally, somemodern criticalmeth ods are brought tobear on thepoem, with a feminist reading of thedeath ofAude and theconversion ofBramimonde, and theapplication of structuralist theoryand decon struction as a useful way of discussing thepoem. All inall, there is much toponder in thisvolume, which should prove of value toboth students and teachers of the poem. UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM LESLIE C. BROOK Maistre Wace: A Celebration. Ed. by GLYN S. BURGESS and JUDITH WEISS. St Helier: SocieteJersiaise. 2006. viii+ I97PP.; 8 pp. colour illustrations. /IJ5. ISBN 978 0-90I897-40-4. This book presents proceedings of the 2004 colloquium in Jersey on the twelfth century vernacular hagiographer and historical writer Wace. The editors, Glyn S. Burgess and Judith Weiss, have (respectively) translatedWace's verse chronicles, the Roman de Rou and Roman deBrut, intoEnglish: theircommitment tomaking Wace better known and more widely available is reflected in this volume, which contains short essays inboth French and English, littleadapted fromoral form,on all of Wace's known works. Wace was born inJerseyand spentmost of his life inCaen: JudithEverard's open ing essay on the social, ecclesiastical, and governmental circumstances of theplaces in which he lived provides a case study of thecomplex social network spanning England, Normandy, and theChannel Islands in the twelfthcentury. Nine of the thirteen essays are substantially concerned with theRou, the verse history of the dukes ofNormandy and Anglo-Norman kings of England composed MLR, I03. I, 2008 221 forHenry II, who, to Wace's dismay, eventually withdrew his patronage and trans ferred theproject toBenoit de Sainte-Maure. The Rou has been understudied, inpart because it isbased largely on other survivingworks and lacks theArthurian appeal of theBrut, and these essays display a range of approaches to it. Matthew Bennett notes the accuracy of Wace's accounts ofwarfare, while also noting laterexploitation of his listofNormans accompanying William theConqueror. Essays by Philip E. Bennett, Catherine Bougy, Dolores Buttry, and Laurie Scott Tomchak take up (among other things) the representation of the dukes ofNormandy, particularly Duke Richard I, whose career as reported byWace ranges from invitinghis pagan Danish kinsmen to laywaste Normandy inhis fightagainst King Louis to saving the soul of a sacristan...