No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Roland's Christian Heroism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Extract
It is an anomaly that most readers of the Chanson de Roland seem to side with the villain, not the hero. Improbable as it is that the poet would have sympathized with this condemnation of his hero, the usual verdict seems to be that of Ganelon–that Roland is guilty of overweening pride. For example, the introduction to a new translation speaks of Roland's ‘presumptuous folly,’ and regards him as a ‘tragic’ hero who sins through pride and ‘impetuosity,’ barely redeeming himself by admitting his error (‘three mighty blasts of Roland's oliphant … proclaim his admission of error’) and dying in sanctity because he is penitent. The translator seems to agree, noting in her preface that ‘Roland's words of repentance [are] so convincing that he, who might well have sinned the same way again, can be carried off to heaven with angelic and human rejoicing’ (p. x). But an odd note creeps into the same sentence, for, she says, his ‘words of repentance are imprecise enough to leave his heroic stature untouched.’ Is heroism, then, incompatible with repentance? Perhaps this depends on what the hero repents. If Roland must repent because he has wickedly caused the slaughter of his own men, then he would seem to be more villain than hero.
- Type
- Miscellany
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Fordham University Press
References
1 March, Harold, introduction to The Song of Roland , trans. Terry, Patricia (Indianapolis 1965) xxii–xxiii.Google Scholar
2 The argument of Julian Eugene White ('La Chanson de Roland: Secular or Religious Inspiration?’ Romania 84 [1963] 398–408) amounts to much the same thing. The case for Roland's sin of ‘desmesure’ has, of course, been argued by many others, a notable example being Alain Renoir in ‘Roland's Lament: Its Meaning and Function in the Chanson de Roland,’ Speculum 35 (1960) 572–583.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 ‘La Mort de Roland,’ Cahiers de civilisation médievale, 7 (1964) 134–143.Google Scholar
4 Jones, George Fenwick, The Ethos of the Song of Roland (Baltimore 1963); e.g. 177. But it is not clear whether, according to Jones's reading, Roland really has anything to repent, since he ‘succeeds in his task even though he dies in the effort’ (p. 187). — Foulet, Alfred (‘Is Roland Guilty of desmesure?’ Rom. Phil. 10 [1956–57] 145–148) also agrees that he is in the end successful, and maintains that he commits a tactical error, not a sinful act, which happens to lead to eventual victory for his side — and is even perhaps a deliberate act of sacrifice for the cause. Google Scholar
5 ‘The Secular Inspiration of the Chanson de Roland,’ Speculum 37 (1962) 390–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Introduction to her trans. (London 1957) 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 For example, Hatto, A. T., in the ‘Introduction to a Second Reading of the Poem’ in his trans. (London 1965): ‘The poet yielded his imagination to his un-Christian subject matter to an extent that baffles us in a Christian of the high Middle Ages’ (p. 344). — It has, of course, been argued that both poems are in fact fundamentally Christian. In the case of Beowulf, most Old English scholars today would be more in sympathy with this view than with that of Professor March, who refers to the poem (p. xx) as ‘a heathen poem with incongruous Christian insertions.’ Google Scholar
8 Line 1138. Quotations from the Chanson de Roland are from the edition ed. Bedier, Joseph (Paris 1931).Google Scholar
9 ‘Romanesque Design in the Chanson de Roland,’ Rom. Phil., 18 (1964) 143–164. Owen also sees feudalism as an important factor, but does not associate it with Christianity, as Farnham does; Jones sees the two as in basic conflict, since the feudal loyalty is to earthly ties, rather than to the City of God (cf., e.g., pp. 80, 82, 126).Google Scholar
10 Paper delivered to the Columbia University Seminar on Medieval Studies in the spring of 1966, later that year (in expanded form) at Poitiers, where it will be published shortly.Google Scholar
11 Cf., e.g., Jones, , 103ff.Google Scholar
12 ‘Kriemhild … became a beautiful woman, therefore many men had to lose their lives.’ Nibelungenlied, ed. Bartsch, Karl (Leipzig 1886) 1.Google Scholar
13 ‘The hall towered, high and gabled; it awaited the hostile flames.’ Beowulf, ed. Klaeber, Fr. (Boston 1950) lines 81–82.Google Scholar
14 E.g., Holmes, Urban Tigner Jr., A History of Old French Literature (New York 1948) 68, speaking of ‘prophetic dreams in which an angel appears to Charlemagne…. ’ Not all the dreams include angels among the visible personnel, but even when they do, this may be simply a translation into Christian terms of the gods and supernatural beings who appear in so many dreams in the sagas.Google Scholar
15 Chanson de Roland, ed. Atkinson Jenkins, T. (Boston 1924) n. to line 275ff. p. 60.Google Scholar
16 ‘There I seemed to see many wolves, and they all attacked me, and I turned back to the Rang River.’ Brennu–Njalssaga, ed. Jonsson, F. (Halle 1908) 139.Google Scholar
17 Such as Helgi's almost identical dream in Droplaugarsona, symbolizing the enemies who are about to ambush the hero as wolves; for further examples, cf. Hallberg, Peter, The Icelandic Saga, trans. Schach, Paul (Lincoln, Neb. 1962) Ch. 7, and Kelchner, Georgia Dunham, Dreams in Old Norse Literature (Cambridge 1935).Google Scholar
18 Ed. Bartsch, , 4.Google Scholar
19 Cf. Mrs. Terry's Preface, viii.Google Scholar
20 Cf. Krappe, Alexander Haggerty, Alliteration in the Chanson de Roland and in the Carmen de Prodicione Guenonis (Iowa City, Ia. 1921) 29–31, and Jenkins, , xxxix.Google Scholar
21 Cf., e.g. Holmes, , 67.Google Scholar
22 ‘Because of his pride’ (‘confidence,’ or ‘over-confidence,’ perhaps); ed. Gordon, E. V. (London 1957) line 89. For various views on this question, cf. e.g. Battaglia, F. S., ‘Notes on Maldon: Toward a Definition of ofermod,’ ELN, 2 (1965) 247–249; Tolkien, J. R. R., ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorththelm's Son,’ English Association Essays and Studies, n.s. 6 (1953) 13–18; Samouce, W. A., ‘General Byrhtnoth,’ JEGP, 62 (1963) 129–135; and Whitehead, Frederick, ‘Ofermod et desmesure,’ Cahiers de civilisation mediévale, 3 (1960) 115–117.Google Scholar
23 ‘Courage shall be the firmer, heart the keener, spirit the greater, as our might lessens’; lines 312–313.Google Scholar
24 Jones, argues that the poem represents a ‘primitive and warped concept of Christianity’ (p. 146).Google Scholar
25 Magnusson, Magnus and Hermann, Pállsson, in the introduction to their trans. (Baltimore 1960), see Njal's death as Christian self-sacrifice (p. 27). However, Njal's words do not seem to warrant this interpretation at all.Google Scholar
26 ‘There after the feasting, weeping arose’; line 128.Google Scholar
27 ‘As joy always turns to sorrow in the end,’ p. 400.Google Scholar
28 ‘That passed away; this may too’; in Beowulf, ed. Klaeber, , 285–286.Google Scholar
29 ‘I thank you, Lord of hosts, for all the joys that I have experienced in this world. Now, merciful Lord, I have great need that you grant grace to my spirit, so that my soul may journey into your power, Lord of angels, and pass peacefully. I pray to you that hell-fiends shall not harm it’; lines 173–180.Google Scholar
30 Similarly, W. Mary Hackett's argument, in her review of Jones's book (Rom. Phil. 19 [1965] 119), that ‘the offer of a glove was a recognized way of showing oneself ready to make amends (faire dreit) for a wrong done’ still does not justify the conclusion that such a gesture of contrition indicates repentance for any one specific ‘wrong.’ Google Scholar
31 See, e.g. Gordon's introduction, 18–19.Google Scholar
32 ‘The heathen shall fall in battle’; ‘Then the heathen warriors cut him down.’ Google Scholar
33 Cf. Owen, , 397.Google Scholar
34 Cf. Prosser, Eleanor, Drama and Religion in the English Mystery Plays (Stanford 1961) 19–20.Google Scholar
35 Bromyard, John, Summa Predicantium , quoted in Owst, G. R., Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Cambridge 1933) 332–333.Google Scholar
36 Ibid. 334.Google Scholar
37 Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum, II, cap. xiii.Google Scholar
38 ‘Noble [or dauntless] warrior,’ line 51.Google Scholar