From Chanson de Geste to Epic Chronicle

Medieval Occitan Poetry of War

Gérard Gouiran, Linda M. Paterson, Linda Paterson, Linda M. Paterson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138493223
• eBook ISBN: 9781351028363
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

In this collection of essays Gérard Gouiran, one of the world's leading and much-loved scholars of medieval Occitan literature, examines this literature from a primarily historical perspective. Through texts offering hitherto unexplored insights into the history and culture of medieval Europe, he studies topics such as the representation of alterity through female figures and Saracens in opposition to the ideal of the Christian knight; the ways in which the narrating of history can become resistance and propaganda discourse in the clash between the Catholic Church and the French on the one hand, and the Cathar heretics and the people of Occitania on the other; questions of intertextuality and intercultural relations; cultural representations fashioning the West in contact with the East; and Christian dissidence in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Written in an approachable style, the book will be of historical, literary and philological interest to scholars and students, as well as any reader curious about this hitherto little-known Occitan literature. (CS1087).

I

Women and Saracens in the Occitan chansons de geste

1

Silhouettes of women in the Occitan and Old French Roland texts¹

In comparison with the Roland chansons de geste, the epics of Classical Antiquity seem to attribute a positively central role to women compared to the minimal space they occupy in the first of the new epic genre. Here, everything seems to polarise two universes: the world of the court, to which women belong, and the world of the camp and war, from which they are excluded. This seems to suggest that in a war waged on enemy territory there could be no women at all beyond those of the land being invaded: Saracen women, embodying the court of the Other.² Christian women can put in an appearance only when the warriors – or at least the survivors – go home to their native land. Nonetheless, women can still play a part without needing to be present. It is in relation to them that Bishop Turpin estimates the terrible loss he foresees at Roncevaux, ‘from which many women will be filled with sorrow, so many girls made orphans and so many noble ladies widowed’.³ But above all, they haunt the heroes’ memories, the more so as their world is exclusively masculine. Hence women are particularly present in the way in which they bring the warriors’ values to life. Even in their absence, they form an audience without whose sanction an act of violence or daring cannot gain heroic status.

1Texts referred to here are the Chanson de Roland (= CdR, Oxford manuscript); Ronsasvals (= Rs); Roland à Saragosse; Mortier’s Les Textes de la Chanson de Roland (Venice IV; Les Grandes Chroniques de France; Venice VII; Cambridge; Conrad; Lyon); and Châteauroux (ed. Subrenat). For full references see the Bibliography.

2For the character of the Saracen queen Bramimonde, whose name takes various forms in the Occitan texts, see chapter 4 and Picchio Simonelli (1986). For the depiction of the female Saracen see especially Bancourt (1982).

3Don mantas damas en seran corrosseyas,/ Tantas pieuzellas en seran orfanellas/ E tantas donnas gentils veuzas clameyas (Rs, 235–37).

There is, however, an exception to this physical absence of Christian women. In Ronsasvals, when Oliver’s son Galian comes to ask Charlemagne to arm him knight, the emperor orders him to be given a bath before his dubbing ceremony, and donnas and donzellas put on his armour.⁴ Who are these women and girls? Even if one of them has the same name as Galian, it can hardly be inferred that she is his sister, especially given the circumstances in which Oliver sired this son of whose very existence he is ignorant.⁵ In any case this is the only passage which allows a glimpse of women in the Frankish army. Their presence probably conforms to reality, and is signalled in the Grandes Chroniques de France.⁶ We seem to be faced with a collision of clichés emanating from two different literary universes: the author inserts into the world of the masculine epic the romance tradition of the wandering knight, who is welcomed with, in particular, a bath.

4Donnas, donzellas li van son cors armier;/ L’una ac nom Giborga de Raynier/ E l’autra fon Gaeta de Monclier (Rs, 878–80).

5Women play quite an important part in Oliver’s life. In the Voyage de Charlemagne the peer makes a gab (boast) that he will make love to the daughter of King Hugh a hundred times; however, if here he forgoes dishonouring her at her entreaty, another idea of the character must have existed: the circumstances related by Ronsasvals closely resemble those of the Voyage, but in Ronsasvals the princess is named and the gab is carried out, Baracla even becoming pregnant by him. In the Occitan tradition we also meet another son of Oliver, born to a pagan woman: in the Roman d’Arles, the mother of Poure Noirit is Blancasflos, sister of Tibaut, the Saracen king of Arles (ed. Chabaneau 1889, vv. 653–90).

6et aucun avoient pechié es Sarrazines et es autres fames chrestienes maismes, que aucun avoient amenées de France (ed. Mortier, p. 61; ‘and some had sinned with Saracen and other women, even Christians that some had brought from France’).

In our texts as a whole it is no surprise that thoughts of the absent woman blend with homesickness. Here she becomes the concrete, tangible image of nostalgia and so is generally cited among other objects of regret. So when the Frankish vanguard arrives in Gascony, the Oxford Roland tells us ‘it now reminded them of its fiefs and honours and maids and noble wives: there was no-one who did not weep for pity’.⁷ Similarly, when Gandelbuon le Frison realises he is about to die, he remembers, ‘I had two sons by my noble wife’ (Rs 632). And when Ganelon leaves on an embassy from which he is convinced he will not return, he entrusts the barons with this mission: ‘In sweet France, my lords, you will go to greet my wife on my behalf, and Pinabel, my friend and my peer, and Baldwin, the son of mine you know’.⁸

7Dunc le remembret des fius e des honurs/ E des pulceles e des gentilz oixurs:/ Cel n’en i ad ki de pitet ne plurt (CdR, 820–22).

8‘En dulce France, seignurs, vos en irez:/ De meie part ma muiller salüez,/ E Pinabel, mun ami e mun per,/ E Baldewin, mun filz que vos savez’ (CdR, 360–63).

Variation in the order of regrets may also be significant, for example the fact that Ganelon’s first thoughts go to his wife. In preferring the love of a woman to epic male companionship and even his kin, so fundamental in a feudal context, is Ganelon not showing that he is a stranger to the world around him and ‘therefore’ ready to betray it? We should not forget that among the gifts which corrupt Charlemagne’s ambassador there are presents addressed by name from Queen Bramimonde⁹ to Ganelon’s wife: ‘To your wife I shall send two jewels rich with gold, amethysts and jacinths; they are worth more than all the wealth of Rome. Your great emperor never had such things’.¹⁰ Is not Ganelon’s wife, mother to Roland and sister to Charlemagne, thereby made to take some responsibility, even if involuntarily, for events at Roncevaux? And it will incidentally not be the only time she does so.

9The Saracen queen’s name takes various forms in the Occitan and Old French texts – for example, Brasilmone, Bramidoine, Bramidonie.

10‘A vostre femme enveierai dous nusches;/ bien i ad or, matices e jacunces,/ eles valent mielz que tut l’aveir de Rume./ Vostre emperere si bones n’en out unches’ (CdR, 637–40).

That said, among the female shadows haunting the memory of the epic heroes, Aude is well known to be the main figure. But the first problem posed by the fair Aude is that if we take account of our corpus as a whole, her relationship to Roland is far from clear. If we follow the Oxford Roland, everything is simple: Aude is Roland’s betrothed; she calls him ‘the captain who swore to me to take me as his wife’.¹¹ The situation changes in the Occitan texts, which lead us to conclude that Roland has married her. The Ronsasvals states that he wed her at Vienne,¹² and Oliver speaks to his friend of ‘my sister Aude, whose lord you are’.¹³ Even more clearly, in the Rollan a Saragossa, Roland says to his companion, ‘I have taken your sister to wife’ (Vostra seror hay presa per molher, 279). There is confirmation of this relationship in the fact that Roland feels he has the right or duty to dispose of her future, and has the emperor told ‘that he should take in the clear-faced Aude and take care of her as a noble and most worthy lady, just as one would an apple-tree in an orchard’.¹⁴ Gandelbuon will deliver this message even more explicitly: ‘Take in the clear-faced Aude so that she may retain a perfect lover to love, just as he tends the apple-tree in the protective orchard’.¹⁵ But the same texts also make it clear that this marriage has not been consummated: after thinking of his wedding, Roland ‘ponders, for he has to suffer death and he will not have complete joy of Belauda’,¹⁶ and Oliver keeps the two aspects quite separate, referring to ‘my sister Aude, whose lord you are, and I wish you may hold her to take your pleasure with her’,¹⁷ distinctly implying a difference between institutional ownership and physical possession. Aude gives us clear confirmation of this factual state: ‘I can never embrace my husband’ (Rs 1785). We are a long way from the Ruolantes Liet where the young woman demands of Charlemagne, ‘Give me back my husband to whom you have given me as wife’.¹⁸

11‘le catanie, Ki me jurat cume sa per a prendre?’ (CdR, 3709–10).

12ha Vienna l’espozet el gravier (Rs, 921).

13‘seror Auda, de qui yest messenhayre’ (Rs, 916).

14‘Que prenna Auda am son clar vizamant;/ A...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• List of Original Essays
• Part I Women and Saracens in the Occitan chansons de geste
• Part II Aspects of war in occitan chansons de geste and lyric poetry
• Part III The albigensian crusade
• Bibliography
• Index