Turoldus biography sample

​TUROLD (fl.

Turoldus biography sample

1075–1100), romance-writer, has been considered by some as the author of the ‘Chanson de Roland,’ whose composition is assigned by the best authorities to the end of the eleventh century. Its attribution to a person of that name, a common enough one in the eleventh century, rests on the last line of the poem in the oldest known manuscript of it in the Bodleian library at Oxford, ‘Ci falt la Geste que Turoldus declinet’ (i.e.

thus ends the Geste which Turold completes). The ‘Geste’ is referred to four times in the poem as a sort of historical document, so if Turold was the author of anything, it was of this previous compilation. But ‘declinet’ may have two meanings, a primary one of ‘finish’ and a secondary one of ‘relate.’ The first is the one most generally adopted.

So that Turold may be the name of either the scribe who wrote that particular manuscript, the author of the ‘Geste,’ or the jongleur who sang