In 2019, les Cours de civilisation française de la Sorbonne celebrate their first centenary. Events, unpublished documents, archives, testimonies ... every week, find us on this page to follow the news of this anniversary.

The Song of Roland: the epic that founded French literature
French literature begins with a defeat. Around 1100, a poet of whom we may know only the name, Turoldus, set into verse the disaster of Roncevaux: a rearguard crushed in a Pyrenean pass, a hero who refuses to call for help, an emperor who arrives too late. The Song of Roland, some 4,000 lines declaimed by minstrels from castle to

