Chansons de geste have long been appropriated by national sentiment, although the nationality in question has traditionally been French, as in Robert Bossuat's stirring formulation about the Chanson de Roland in a volume of French literary history from the 1950s:

Undoubtedly chansons de geste did play an important role in France. They played an important – but different – role in insular literature, too. From the beginning of Anglo-Norman culture, the story of Roland at Roncesvalles was cultivated in England and used to bolster Norman cultural pride, to the extent that the mythically depicted Charlemagne who warred against the Saracens became imaginatively linked to the conqueror William as well as to the crusaders who took Jerusalem. The earliest manuscript evidence we have of the emergence of the chansons into written form suggests that it was largely in England that it first happened, as does the formal heterogeneity of those of insular origin. Yet in England, though widely read, chansons de geste never formed a separate genre, and evi-dence suggests they were not distinguished from romances.