Geography, Material Culture, and the Other: Part One

As we move from The Song of Roland to Beowulf, one thread that I keep finding myself pursuing is the way in which both poems use geography and material culture to define and demarcate the Other - and what happens when these definitions collapse or are penetrated. By "material culture" in this case, I am thinking specifically about war-gear: helmets, shields, armor, swords, and spears, all of which (I would think) impose a very rigid sense of selfhood over against those "others" on the far side of your hauberk and shield. (To paraphrase Wittgenstein, the limits of my armor are the limits of my world.)

For example, as Roland rushes to its conclusion, we see all of the physical barriers which had previously differentiated Franks and Paynims giving way one by one. The vertiginous Pyrenees - "High are the hills, the valleys dark and deep, / Grisly the rocks, and wondrous grim the steeps" (83) - which previously separated "douce France" and "clere Espaigne" and which could be surmounted by the French only "with pain and grief" (83) are overcome for good: "They pass the mountains, they pass the rocky heights, / Leave the deep gorges and narrow vales behind" (171). When the armies of Baligant and Charlemagne take the field against one another, "betwixt the two is neither hill nor vale, / Forest nor wood" (176). The two sides occupy the same ground even poetically; laisse 227, for example (pp. 170-171) combines separate scenes involving Charlemagne and Baligant into one stanza. In the battle, the barriers of shield and armor demarcating the two sides likewise mutually succumb: "shields [are] smashed all to bits, / ...bright hauberks gride as the mail-rings rip" (184). Things come down to Charlemagne and Baligant one-on-one, and again all physical demarcation shatters: "The rivets fall, in shreds the buckles fly. / In their bare byrnies now breast to breast they fight" (187).

At this point, in other words, any separation of Self and Other which existed outside the mind has collapsed. On the same geographical and poetic ground, outside the shelter of city wall or mountain range, with their armies scattered in the melee and their shields battered to bits, Charlemagne and Baligant each face a crisis of identity. Each is the mirror image of the other. They can only differentiate themselves by factors which are confessional and ideological, that is, (more or less) intangible and arbitrary: religion (Charlemagne's criterion) and feudal/political allegiance (Baligant's). Even as the two exchange demands to surrender and convert in laisse 260 (p. 188), there is a sense that for either to incorporate the other into his polity would reduce that polity to meaninglessness. Baligant has already begun to doubt himself and the basis of his power, while Charlemagne, throughout this battle and this part of the poem, is struggling to articulate the meaning of his empire beyond just Christian faith. For either combatant, to stop defining the Other as the other would be to lose his sense of self. Hence the ambiguity voiced by the poet over how this single combat can end: it will continue either "till one lies dead on ground" (laisse 258) or "till one confess he's wrong, the other right" (laisse 259; both p. 187). The sign that Charlemagne will win this fight appears when, after being rebuked and re-authorized by the Archangel Gabriel, "he is himself again" (laisse 262, p. 188). Despite the loss of all geographical and material structures of difference, he feels secure enough in his religio-political selfhood again to strike down his alter ego.

The aftermath of this battle gives us the overthrow of the last physical barrier between Paynim and Frank in the poem, the previously impenetrable walls of Saragossa. With this barrier broken, Bramimonda's "otherness" likewise collapses, and for her part she loses all compelling reason to remain Paynim in identity. However, despite this and the other affirmations of Selfhood and triumphs over the Other that occur, the end of the poem makes clear that Charlemagne, exhausted and world-weary, is not really "himself" after all. Some definition of the Self over against the Other apparently has, in fact, been lost along the way.

Since this posting is plenty long already, I guess I'll save my thoughts on Beowulf in this mode for another installment...