Heroism in the Song of Roland

In the Song of Roland, the poet makes a very sure distinction between not only the pagans and the Franks, but also between each of the individual characters. Through the heroes and villains in the story, the poet gives a moral expectation for the neo-Romans in Francia. The two heroes in the story, Charlemagne and Roland, symbolise heroism through their actions. Charlemagne, who is two centuries old and has gathered quite a lot of wisdom at this stage of his life, identifies with a more paternal figure and heroism. In the Song, Charlemagne is quite the opposite of the virile hero we might picture. Instead, he is a small, shriveled and ancient man, aged by life and the many battles he fights. He is wise, humble, and diplomatic. He symobolises one side of heroism in the Song.

Roland is depicted as a young fellow, well [self-] absorbed in his own youth. He is strong, noble, brave, and proud. He is the young virile hero we might imagine a medieval hero to be, and perhaps he was the one from which Charlemagne aged. While Roland lacks the wisdom and humility gained with age, he possess the physical prowess necessary in combat. And here lies the other side of heroism in the epic. However, it is important to note that without diplomacy, strength is useless; without humility, pride has no meaning; without wisdom, power is weakness. And so it is exemplified in the Song.

Summary of 'Guerre sainte dans La Chanson de Roland: La «Mythification» de l'histoire' as Translated by Mark Dominik

The Crusades is a tricky topic among Christians and non-Christians today. The sweet pious imagery of Christians we perceive from the medieval world completely mystifies the reason behind the horrific actions of the numerous Crusades. However, historians are well aware that these raids through the Holy Lands were by no means ignorant bursts of hatred. The Crusades were considered, by the Christians who participated in them, a Holy War. This was not merely a pillaging of Islamic land, this was a divine war, God-ordained, this was a way to establish your place in sainthood! The Song of Roland demonstrates to the general population of Francia that the act of murdering and pillaging through Arabia was not only justified, but proved their faith. Mark Dominik, in the essay he translates, notes the different literary elements of the Song that point toward a propaganda nature. 

Dominik identifies that the work is much aligned with a national epic, just as the Iliad was for the Greeks, and the Aeneid was for Rome.  The Franks of Francia are a newly established empire, or more correctly, a newly gathered tribes-people. Having witnessed the quality of power the Roman Empire had possessed over the known world, the Franks had a strong desire to be Rome, and through Clovis's conversion and Charlemagne's name, they were able to accomplish just this. While they now held the name, the Franks knew something was missing. The Rome they had seen had been overrun by Muslims. 
Here is justification number one: the Crusades are only taking back their own land; robbing the robbers; becoming Robin Hood for the Mediterranean. 

Not only do the Franks find a national identity within the Song, they are also able to mythologise religious and political leaders into epic heroes and small battles into great war triggers. The Song of Roland articulates the many atrocities that happened in the battle of Roncevaux at the hands of the evil Muslims, when in fact this was a short battle with the Basques. The heroes of this story end up being both the sacrificial Roland and the omnibenevolent Charlemagne. Dominik notes that both of these men take on the role of Christ symbolically in the Song, providing a tactile embodiment of Christ as a role model of the ideal Frankish Christian citizen, as Aeneas did in the Aeneid and Achilles in the Iliad. And here come the second justification: the Crusades are an act of justice for our fallen hero and serve as a way of imitating a morally upright Christian. 

Another element the author notes abundant throughout the Song is the mentality the poem develops. In the Song, the poet readily establishes an "us vs. them" mentality. The Song never establishes that the enemy they fight are specifically of the Islamic religion. Instead, much broader terms are used, such as pagans. This term not only includes Muslims, which the Crusades were primarily targeted at, but also any non-Christians. Charlemagne not only picked fights with Arabs, but also much further North with Saxons, also of a 'pagan' religion. In addition to this division, the Song clearly denotes the moral purity of themselves (the Christian) against the incurable immorality of the pagans (perhaps Saxons and Muslims). This immorality was seen to such a radical degree that the very language of the poem begins to dehumanise the enemy. Their view of morality remained very black and white. Since all Franks were Christians and all Christians were morally correct, all Franks were morally pure. And also since Christianity was the only way, all non-Christians (read pagans) were evil. Finally, here is the third justification: the Crusades served as a way of keeping the Mediterranean world pure from pagan (evil) contaminants (of a non-human source), and encouraging the world toward a Godly and upright moral standard.  

The complex and questionable nature of the Crusades was of the same nature even prior to the First Crusade. However, the justification of their actions, as demonstrated through Dominik's essay on the Song of Roland, shows a thorough moral compensation for the atrocities committed by the wandering Crusaders. Unfortunately, the propaganda of literary articles such as the Song worked in making the Crusades of a "Christian" source. 

Marjana, Marjana, Quite the Honour!

A typical night in the glory of an Arabian province. A wealthy turban-ed man comes home from a long day of work managing his local oil rig, producing millions upon millions of dollars each week. "Salem, Abdul!", cautiously says one of this seven wives. Yes, this man's name is indeed Abdul Muhammed Nassar. "Prepare me my falafel, woman!" he yells back sternly, and quite honestly, forgetting whether it was Fatima or Alia whom he addressed. At no more than this, the unknown wife runs back into her familiar place in the kitchen, fearing for her life, considering the fate of her predecessors. After all, Abdul has had a long day at work, his personal belly-dancer was ill today, and his cousin, Hakeem Muhammed Sarkis, had died in a local bombing (one which he himself initiated, of course), and at any point, her husband could act homicidally.

What must this do with Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves? In this apparently simple story, the under lying theme does its best to reject and discredit the many stereotypes the West has developed about the arab culture, most prominently, those regarding Arab women.

Marjana is the lowest of low. She is a slave. And not only is she a slave, be that bad enough, she is a female slave. She serves her master, Qasim, until he is murdered. She then helps dispose of the body by faking a post-mortem death. Be that not clever enough, she saves the life of her more heroic master, Ali Baba, on multiple accounts and continues to murder thirty-eight thieves. Her keen intellect and sharp wits are demonstrated throughout our story, emphasising the fact that this woman is only good befriended, or married to, as Ali Baba took to. 

The cleverness of Marjana in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves annihilates all and any remaining stereotypes about either slaves or women that were perpetuated by the readings of such misogynous stories such as the The Tale of Scheherazade. In that story, the only role women played was to destroy the lives of men, extracting the only meaningful moral which was to control your wives through any means, especially if it means physical beatings or execution. In contrast, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves demonstrates women in a way that strongly benefits the house of Ali Baba Instead of chaos breaking when the woman deals in secrecy, Ali Baba life is spared multiple times, noting that women are much more beneficial in deception than in tight grips, another common stereotype of arab culture. 

First Impressions on The Tale of Scheherazade

The Tale of Scheherazade is a fascinating story of two Arabian men defending their own status of manliness from the actions of their very own wives. Despite its quite simple plot and curious (especially to westerners) moral theme, this Tale of Scheherazade offers an abundance of commentary of the workings of Arabian literature in the culture it was being read.

One important element I noted in reading The Tale of Scheherazade was the emphasis put into the character descriptions and the conflicts between the characters. Interestingly, the sole source of conflicts in this story is adultery, a practice frowned down upon in many cultures, especially in Islamic Arabia. In many western stories, we see conflict between men and men, men and gods, and gods and gods. Here we have an instance of conflict between man and wife, familial bonds broken, never to be repaired. Family is an important part of all cultures, and serves a great plot twist when there are marital bonds betrayed. In Sophocles' Oresteia, family bonds are treated with just as much emphasis and are dramatised in similar degrees. As for character description, the story places heavy emphasis on the relationship of one's social status with their racial and aesthetic characteristics.

Another element that plays in the story is the immersion of religious and political law. In the story, when the wives and their lovers are caught in adultery, the natural response was capital punishment. Law appears unquestionable in this story, as the punishments dealt in the story are termed in such "matter-of-fact" words. 

The last part of the narrative that I found interesting was its fairytale-esque mannerisms. The story is presented within another story. There is a mythical element to it that coordinates with the reality of the story. And most notably in Burton's translation, there is an almost "forced" rhythm and metre to it. Each of these parts reminds me of tales of Aesop and Grimm, while having the mature content and sophistry of Homer and Virgil.

The Book without Authors Summary

Translation is tricky in any scenario, whether it be translating to or from a foreign language, or translating in the same language but two entirely different cultures or times. When transcribing a manuscript accurately, one must take into account both the obvious linguistic differences as well as the subtle connotational and cultural understanding of the text. Further complexities arise when the language is not in a romanticised alphabet nor the language of the text exists as it did when the document was written. And finally, there are the possibilities of a text going through multiple translators, "co-authors", and others who interacted with the text, and the uncertainty of the original, clouds the original intended meaning of the base text. 
This is tornado of linguistic struggles the text The One Thousand and One Nights went through in order to arrive at the modern American editions and translations we hold in our library. The text is assumed to be a Persian prototype, sourcing back to the height of the Persian Empire in Arabia. As the region fluctuated away from Persian and into [a version] of Arabic, the story was translated and continued to spread through the Mediterranean world, at some point being translated into Egyptian and Syriac. It was then that Greeks were able to translate it, and from there it was quite accessible by the western world. However, orientalists of the west (namely from France and the United Kingdom), revisited the, what they believe to be, original text, translating directly from the Persian and/or Arabic. By doing this, the orientalists tried to achieve the most accurate translation of the original document by going directly to it, rather than indirectly through multiple generations, languages, and cultures. 

SWB Chapter 28-Great and Holy Majesty: Response Questions

What is the Justinian Code?

Page from Justinian Code Book

Justinian holds in his hands the power and future of the eastern Roman Empire, and soon he will spread westward, reclaiming the world as God has deemed him to. What wrong can he do? He surely is the divinely chosen ruler of Byzantium, right?

This is Justinian's sole claim, on which any question of political manoeuvres and otherwise political faux pas were justified, also having divine and destined purpose in God's larger purpose. He consecutively constructed a code, a socio-religious code by which all oriental Romans were to read as law and obey as if God Himself had handed to them. A law by which society was expected to function or else justice served, and justice served by God's chosen people reinforced by eternal damnation. 

Justinian planned this all out, and even knew how to perpetuate this plot. He began closing every port of foreign idea. In his Code 529, Bauer notes that Justinian banned all forms of pagan worship in public. He shut down philosophical academies, notably places where Platonic philosophy was preached. Even though he shut down platonic schools, he used Plato's utopian ideologies in his favour, indoctrinating his people with his own teaching and circularly self-perpetuating patterns of thought. It was foolproof, in theory. 

Much like the failed attempts of Constantine and the Divine Right of King theory reestablished by King James, their political and philosophical worlds were less than waterproof, perhaps resistant, but in no way did it prevent foreign contaminants. As soon as there is hope for improvement in any of these examples, there comes a socio-political movement for change.

This change meant ill for Justinian's influence on Byzantium.

The Source of Pain in a World of Hurt: an Augustinian Analysis

It only takes only a few moments of careless inspection to see it. It has existed since the beginning of time. It is what binds all humans together yet creates distinct and distasteful boundaries under which we are repelled from one another. The universal topic of philosophical thought; ubiquitous in all questions. No matter what set of beliefs one holds, there is one thing to be sure, and perhaps one of the only things: the world we exist in doesn’t function properly. In Augustinian terms, “evil” certainly does exist in our world. Religion and philosophy alike try to put reason behind why the world is corrupted and how we can understand this corruption, since that is the only experience we hold. If there was something as ideal goodness, we could not comprehend it considering we have no comparison, having only experienced a less-than-good world. Augustine explains in his Confessions the reason behind our fallen world; why there is the concept of evil. He says that God, who is a perfect being, created man and the world, also perfect. However, when sin contaminated the world, it created a string of improper relationships in the world, that is things interacting contrary to how God intended them to. As Christians, our goal is to come back to the proper relation we had with God and creation before sin entered the world. Augustine sees the relationship between Creator and Creation after the Fall as a complex mixture of the original good God intended and the sin-contaminated interactions between them.

The first aspect to look at when dealing with the problem of evil is establishing what evil is to begin with, where did it come from, and so on. Again, this is an onslaught of philosophical problems and abstract terms. Augustine, however, quite clearly defines evil in the context of good, reaching his definition through several logical steps. First he notes that God created all things, and everything he created was good. Since we understand evil to be, perhaps, the polar opposite of good, it therefore cannot be a ‘thing’ at all, otherwise God put evil in the world, contradicting the first two premises. The next questions that Augustine follows with is, “Where, then, is Evil...?” (Bk. VII, 5.7). Augustine argues that evil is not material at all, nor is good. Rather both are entities that exist in the essence and context of material, that is how material is used. The articulation of evil is solely based on the quantity of good within the material, evil then, being a relative term. 

This concept may be hard to comprehend, however, the nature of light and darkness effectively communicates the parallel nature of good and evil. Light and darkness, both being non-physical, in a tangible sense, are yet detectible entities and exist under human visual senses, yet are invisible to all of our other senses. In a similar way, humans can detect good and evil, perhaps not through any neurological sense, but rather a moral sensory device, noted by no scientific evidence. Also, darkness cannot exist without the acknowledgement of light and vice-versa. Yet darkness only can exist without light, or is defined by “the absence of light”. Evil also exists in the absence of good, being defined in Augustine’s words as “...evil is nothing but the diminishment of good to the point where nothing at all is left” (Bk. VII 7.12). 

Augustine, desperate for answers to the problem of evil in our material world then asks, “...where does it come from and how does it creep in?” (Bk. VII, 5.7). Surely evil though it may not be a ‘thing’, stems from absolutely no root. To properly consider evil’s true origin, Augustine traces it back to its birth: the Fall. He notes how the Fall was again, not begun by any evil object, for everything God created in the Garden was truly good, but rather the Serpent’s persuasion and the choice man was given.  After pondering the mysteries of the Fall, and how humanity became imperfect beings influenced by evil he sources “...the cause of evil is the free decision of our will...”(Bk. VII, 5). It is not the actions themselves not the results they may cause that are evil, for they are only the victims of human defected will (the term voluntarius defectus is used in Ch. IV of Augustine’s Enchiridion). Humans have corrupted will in that they do not submit in obedience to the higher power who created them as they were designed. Instead, we exist in a state of constant rebellion to a force that we can and will never overcome.

Now that the source of evil is identified, it is for man to determine where good is and to align himself accordingly with it. In order to understand how Augustine would determine this. Firstly, goodness should be understood in Augustine’s terms, the way to goodness is the same way to Truth. Augustine considers goodness is a mere stem of Truth, and Truth is parallel with God. Therefore, all good things, or all things, have elements of Truth, but not all of Truth exists within each individual thing. This is a gateway to whole other philosophical study, that being the pursuit of Truth, but also drives Augustine’s audience to inquire what the essence of man is and how man can extract goodness from a fallen world. Augustine’s understanding of philosophical ideas and general Epistemology moves from a Manichean ideology to a Neo-Platonist’s perspective in the context of Christianity. A Manichee sees the world as fallen as well, but not by mere defected will, but everything in it being evil. Augustine’s language strongly reflects his distaste of this idea, provided that at the time of writing he believes all Creation to be good. After abandoning Manicheism, Augustine’s post conversion philosophy shows quite strong Platonic sympathies. In reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Augustine explains the nature of reality. The key to understanding Augustinian Epistemology and how Augustine views the material world is in understanding the Platonic concepts demonstrated in the Allegory of the Cave. 

Through Plato’s ideas, Augustine accounts for reality among the material we live in. He highlights the points of the Allegory of the Cave, creating a parallel to a Christian theology. Here, Augustine sets a Platonic standard that is closely kept throughout the Medieval and Renaissance Church, as can be seen later in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and Dante Alighieri. The significance of Plato’s influence on the Church through Augustine during this time period is key to understanding the shifts the church went through at this time. In the Allegory of the Cave, men are bound to face a wall of shadows, imitations of their true forms. These shadows, while they are not as “real”, or in Augustinian terms as “good”, as the original true form, they reflect parts of it, and thus are not the ‘unreal’ or ‘evil’, but rather they are faded forms. In Augustine’s terms, these imitating forms that we interact with on earth are considered to be “the lowest kinds of goods”(Bk. II, 5,10). The prisoners chained to the wall of the cave, having only been taught that they shadows they see are true, in Augustine’s words “turn away from the better and higher [goods]” (Bk. II, 5,10). However, due to our lack of contact with the greater goods, we are unable to understand the scale of goodness and “these lowest goods hold delights for us indeed” (Bk. II, 5,10).  Humans confuse the lesser goods, which we desire because of the aspects within it pointing toward the greater goods, with the greater goods themselves. Or in Plato’s terms, the prisoner finds beauty and truth within the shadows cast upon the wall because they see part of the beauty and truth in the shadows that exist in the world outside. Augustine says that men “distort Truth into a lie and worship and serve the creature instead of the creator”(Bk. V, 5).

Even though the world that exists around us is good to some extent, it surely cannot be the only means by which we perceive true goodness. Trying to understand Truth through material is as difficult as trying to fully imagine a painting with only exposure to a square inch of it. The often conflicting free-wills of humans who attempt coexistence in the world are indeed corrupt (as men naturally are), and we are to “shape ourselves no longer to the standards of this world, but rather restrain ourselves from it”(Bk. XIII, 30), noting that we should not isolate ourselves from it. If we were meant to completely isolate ourselves from the world, we would have no sensual access to God’s goodness through his Creation. Since we are human, we have a great deal of reliance of the material, rational experience, because we have become “servants of reason”(Bk. XII, 31). God’s encouragement to retain a degree of contact with the world is evident in the reincarnation of Christ, which otherwise would’ve been completely pointless. If we were to rely solely on irrational faith, then we would’ve never been created into physical existence in his Creation to begin with. God very specifically intended the physical, material world we live in and created us to be rational beings to understand the material around us. Since we understand truth in a rational way, he sent Christ as a means of sensual and rational connection. Had we been created to only account for God on a rational level, the miracles Jesus performed would have been only a mystery and the breath of God amid the world would be nonexistent and invisible. It is in our individual lives we are to account for both God’s rational, through the material world, and irrational, through faith, communication and decide how we will control our loose free will.

     Augustine demonstrates through the Confessions the complex relationship between God, man, and the world. He presents God as being the innate-known ideal goal after whom man pursues, all men having a desire for Truth and an understanding of evil. The Platonic forms he refers to reflects the nature of God and how the world appears good to us. It is through the material world that we were designed to know God. However, through our defected will, we deny God’s superiority and often live our lives in futile disobedience. This corruption is evil and therefore, we confuse the world, the means by which we reach the goal, with the goal itself, creating an ambiguous journey for man which God actively tries to clarify through the events in our lives.