La Chanson Des Saxons et Sa Réception Norroise: Avatars de La Matière Épique. By Hélène Tétrel. Orléans: Paradigme, 2006. Pp. 410. EUR 40.

In modern French, the Saxon people are known as "les Saxons." In the twelfth-century French of the poet Jean Bodel, however, their name took the form "Saisnes." It is therefore customary to refer to Bodel's poem about Charlemagne's wars against the Saxons as "La Chanson des Saisnes." the author of this book does so whenever she is referring specifically to Bodel's poem. the title of the book subtly indicates a different emphasis—"La Chanson des Saxons" designates a hypothetical construct, the lost French poem or poems about Charlemagne's wars against the Saxons that may have preceded Bodel's reworking of this story-material, and may also have served as the source of the Old Norse accounts of these wars that enter into the thirteenth-century Karlamagnús saga.

Randi Eldevik
Oklahoma State University