Roncesvalles

(redirected from Roncevaux)
Also found in: Encyclopedia.

Ron·ces·valles

(rŏn′sə-vălz′, rôn′thĕs-väl′yĕs)

A mountain pass, 1,057 m (3,468 ft) high, through the western Pyrenees in northern Spain. According to tradition, the Frankish hero Roland died there fighting the Basques during Charlemagne's retreat from a failed campaign against the Moors (778).

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Roncesvalles

(ˈrɒnsəˌvælz; Spanish rɔnθesˈβaʎes)

(Placename) a village in N Spain, in the Pyrenees: a nearby pass was the scene of the defeat of Charlemagne and death of Roland in 778. French name: Roncevaux

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Ron•ces•val•les

(ˌrɒn səsˈvɑ yɛs, ˈrɒn səˌvælz)

n.

a village in N Spain, in the Pyrenees: defeat of part of Charlemagne's army and the death of Roland A.D. 788. French, Ronce•vaux (rɔ̃sˈvoʊ)

Mentioned in ?

References in periodicals archive ?

The battle of Roncevaux is lost, and Charles arrives at a scene of devastation--his nephew Roland, the dozen noble Peers, and the twenty thousand of the entire rear guard, are dead.

Ubi Sunt: Allusion and Temporality in Victorian Poetry

The episode of the Rout of Roncevaux was modified by Lodico in order to appeal to the audiences' ideal of sense of honor which permeates Sicilian life and culture.

Marcella Croce. The Chivalric Folk Tradition in Sicily: A History of Storytelling, Puppetry, Painted Carts and Other Arts

While Hemingway was writing the first draft of "Big Two-Hearted River" in 1924, he was fishing around Roncevaux in the Pyrenees--in the same landscape Jake and Bill later fish in The Sun Also Rises.

Nick Adams, Jake Barnes, and Colonel Cantwell: Hemingway's Sportsman Sketches

This is swell country--Just on the Spanish slope of Roncevaux. Nice country to fight in.

The rites of war and Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

(129-34) David Erdman connects the imagery in this scene to "the dubious battles of history, including Roncevaux and the civil strife in Paris," but the vision of struggling masses crowded together in miserable, bestial conditions, as well as the imagery of warfare, also echoes the rhetoric commonly used to describe city slums during the period.

"Childe Roland to the dark tower came" and the landscapes of the anthropocene

Steiner, George, "Roncevaux." The Return of Thematic Criticism.

Damaged in transit? Valle-Inclan's Tirano Banderas between two world-literatures

Le dernier soupir du maure [beaucoup moins que]Souspiro del Moro[beaucoup plus grand que] par le prince Abou Abdallah qui perd la ville de Grenade, ou encore le passage des troupes andalouses du sultan Abderrahamane dans la ville du sud de la France, Ramatuelle, appele autrefois Rahma'tu Allah a la gloire des vainqueurs de Roncevaux oE Roland le neveu de Charlemagne donna du cor pour sonner la defaite des Francs face aux Maures.

Aussi doux que Sidi El haloui

We said we'd do it someday, maybe all the way to Compostela, but first to Roncevaux. (And we did a few years later, Roncevaux then out to Compostelle.) Sparrow finished Jonesy's novel and thought, in the end, it didn't work.