Monday, November 08, 2010

"You're never too old to learn", people used say. I suppose the modern-day version would be, "Learning, that's for old gits with time on their hands. I'm too busy making money/binge drinking/trying to get on the telly."
Anyway here's something I learned today, courtesy of one John Feffer -
"The Song of Roland, an eleventh century rendering in verse of an eighth century battle, is a staple of Western Civilization classes at colleges around the country. A “masterpiece of epic drama,” in the words of its renowned translator Dorothy Sayers, it provides a handy preface for students before they delve into readings on the Crusades that began in 1095. More ominously, the poem has schooled generations of Judeo-Christians to view Muslims as perfidious enemies who once threatened the very foundations of Western civilization.
"The problem, however, is that the whole epic is built on a curious falsehood. The army that fell upon Roland and his Frankish soldiers was not Muslim at all. In the real battle of 778, the slayers of the Franks were Christian Basques furious at Charlemagne for pillaging their city of Pamplona. Not epic at all, the battle emerged from a parochial dispute in the complex wars of medieval Spain. Only later, as kings and popes and knights prepared to do battle in the First Crusade, did an anonymous bard repurpose the text to serve the needs of an emerging cross-against-crescent holy war."

Anonymous bard = medieval spin-doctor

Addendum: I had to leave this posting in a hurry, and didn't get the link right; now done. Also, didn't credit 'Pitirre' who posted a link to this article on the Angry Arab's Comment Section.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I ignored that..Thanks.
The very first large scale play I've seen in Paris as a young man was "La Chanson de Roland" in Arian Mnoushkine's Theatre du Soleil.. I remember an outrageously innovative piece (then),very spectacular with huge surrealistic dream-like visuel effects, but I couldn't care less about what it was saying and not only because it was in Italian...I remember stepping out of the show saying to myself this is what I want to do..I want to be in shows like these..I forgot who the director was but I recall that Ariane herself, under direction of whom I worked later for a while, was herself very influenced by that style of theatre.

I'm glad that the record on the matter is set straight..We can't blame them "Muhammadeens" for all the ills in the world,past and present,can we?
TGIA

Jemmy Hope said...

Propaganda or poetic licence? A bit of both I suppose. The rewriting of history is a full-time occupation. Our present Prime Minister was recently rewriting the history of World War 2, praising the Americans for coming to Britain's aid at a time when they were still firmly neutral. Lécher le cul 'ricain is an important part of every British PM's duties.
Ariane Mnouchkine - surely a relative of Alexandre? There can't be many Mnouchkine about.

thankgodimatheist said...

His daughter, Jemmy..Brilliant, gifted, visionary yet execrable character..Really a "personage" from hell.. It made many actors cry like babies..I have no idea what she's up to now..

thankgodimatheist said...

I realised that I massacred her name twice in different places..Ariane not Arian and Mnouchkine not Mnoushkine..I may be reading too much English for the good of my ageing French..

Jemmy Hope said...

No comeback from me on the misspelling of names, I do it regularly. Sometimes it's deliberate, as I prefer my spelling to the 'correct' version.
I just looked up Ms. Mnouchkine and her Theatre du Soleil. It sounds something like Joan Littlewood's Stratford Theatre Company in East London (1950s and 60s).