Marybeth, I agree with you that this text/article has not aged particularly well. I did enjoy, and resonated, with the idea of the chanson de geste and recategorization of this genre, but I almost saw her perception of the Saracen's representing one group, or group of characters, as lazy analysis, and possibly also lazy research. Perhaps, much of the current information we have on "Saracens" as a broadband label of many Arabic tribes, and subsequently "others" that were unfamiliar, is fairly new, and an excellent recent critical turn in Medieval studies, but even the presence of the term Saracen in other works seemed to repudiate many of the claims Speed made. Perhaps, she was too focused on the Romance of Horn.