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Charles Moorman reexamines several major works of the western heroic tradition: "The Iliad", "The Odyssey", "Beowulf", "The Song of Roland", "The Nibelungenlied", the Norse sagas, and the Arthurian cycle. Disregarding the usual limited definitions which have controlled the study of heroic literature, he draws together these disparate works by proposing a theme common to them all: the opposition of two major figures whom he names king and captain.
The figure of the king arises from the community with its need for responsible government, while the captain, derived from myth, is a highly individualistic, irresponsible heroic figure. The tension which Moorman sees between them is used as a means of reinterpreting the works under study. Though widely separated in time and cultural milieu, "The Iliad", and "The Song of Roland", for example, can be compared by interpreting both the Agamemnon-Achilles and the Oliver-Roland relationships as conflicts between king and captain. These essays will prove illuminating for layman and scholar alike.
E-Book Content
KINGS &
CAPTAINS
CAPTAINS variations on a Yeroic Theme
Charles Moorman
The University Press of Kenfucky
Standard Book Number 8131-1248-6 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 78-147858 Copyright @ 1971by the University Press of Kentucky A statewide cooperative scholarly publishing agency serving Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky State College, Morehead State University, Murray State University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices:Lexington, Kentucky 40506
For Ruth
Contents PREFACE
ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Chapter O n e T H E ILlAD
xiii
r
Chapter Two T H E ODYSSEY
30
Chapter Three BEOWULF
57
Chapter Four T H E SONG OF ROLAND Chapter Five T H E NIBELUNGENLlED
87
109
Chapter S i x T H E ICELANDlC SAGAS
132
Chapter Seven T H E ARTHUR LEGEND
148
NOTES
173
Preface In reading the scholarship and criticism devoted to what is generally called the heroic literature of the western world, one is frequently more puzzled by the problems that are ignored than by those that are dwelt upon. One can find in the works of generations of scholars pages devoted to explaining away every inconsistency in Homer, relating Beowulf to the hero of the Bear's Son's Tale, or debating the merits of the free-prose and book-prose theories of the origin of the Icelandic sagas-all of which are admittedly of great value to the study of the works-but he looks in vain for answers to questions that often puzzle the untutored upon a first reading. Why, for example, if Beowulf really believes in the cornitatus code, does he desert Hygelac in battle? Or if Roland does not consider it heroic to summon aid at the beginning of the battle of Roncevaux, why does he later consider it proper to do so? Or what is in the least heroic in Achilles' sulking in his tent while his Greek companions are being slaughtered on the battlefield? However naive such questions may seem to those concerned with the more technical problems of source and transmission and structure, they can and should lead to an occasional reexamination and revaluation of the great works of the western heroic tradition, those classics to which we have become so accustomed and about which there exists such critical unanimity that we have become content to rest happily in the inherited judgments of the masters. Not that there has not been and does not continue to be critical dissension concerning the Iliad and the Song of Ro-
land and Beowulf. The "Homeric question," the origins of the chansons de geste, and the relative