CHAPTER XXIII
ROMANTIC CHIVALRY AND COURTLY LOVE
From Roland to Tristan and Lancelot
The instance of Godfrey of Bouillon showed how easy was the passage from knighthood in history to knighthood in legend and romance: legend springing from fact, out of which it makes a story framed in a picture of the time; romance unhistorical in origin, borrowing, devising, imagining according to the taste of an audience and the faculty of the trouvère. A boundless mediaeval literature of poetic legend and romantic fiction sets forth the ways of chivalry. Our attention may be confined to the Old French, the source from which German, English, and Italian literatures never ceased to draw. Three branches may be selected: the chansons de geste; the romans d’aventure; and the Arthurian romances. The subjects of the three are distinct, and likewise the tone and manner of treatment. Yet they were not unaffected by each other; for instance, the hard feudal spirit of the chansons de geste became touched with the tastes which moulded the two other groups, and there was even a borrowing of topic. This was natural, as the periods of their composition over-lapped, and doubtless their audiences were in part the same.
The chansons de geste (gesta == deeds) were epic narratives with historical facts for subjects, and commonly were composed in ten-syllable assonanced or (later) rhyming couplets, laisses so called, the same final assonance or rhyme extending through a dozen or so lines. They told the deeds of Charlemagne and his barons, or the feuds of the barons among themselves, especially those of the time following the emperor’s death. So the subject might be national, for instance the war against the Saracens in Spain; or it might be more provincially feudal in every sense of the latter word.[692] It is not to our purpose to discuss how these poems grew through successive generations, nor how much of Teutonic spirit they put in Romance forms of verse. They were composed by trouvères or jongleurs. The Roland is the earliest of them, and in its extant form belongs to the last part of the eleventh century. One or two others are nearly as early; but the vast majority, as we have them, are the creations, or rather the remaniements, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
These chansons present the feudal system in epic action. They blazon forth its virtues and its horrors. The heroes are called barons (ber) and also chevaliers;[693] vassalage and prowess (proecce) are closely joined; the Roland speaks of the vassalage of Charles le ber (Charlemagne). The usages of chivalry are found:[694] a baron begins as enfant, and does his youthful feats (enfances); then he is girt with manhood’s sword and given the thwack which dubs him chevalier. Naturally, the chivalry of the chansons is feudal rather than romantic. It is chivalry, sometimes crusading against “felun paien,” sometimes making war against emperors or rivals; always truculent, yet fighting for an object and not for pure adventure’s sake or the love of ladies. The motives of action are quite tangible, and the tales reflect actual situations and conditions. They tell what knights (the chevaliers and barons) really did, though, of course, the particular incidents related may not be historical. Naturally they speak from the time of their composition. The Roland, for example, throbs with the crusading wrath of the eleventh century—a new fervour, and no passionate memory of the old obscure disaster of Roncesvalles. It does not speak from the time of the great emperor. For when Charlemagne lived there was neither a “dulce France” nor the sentiment which enshrined it; nor was there a sharply deliminated feudal Christianity set over against a world of “felun paien”—those false paynim, who should be trusted by no Christian baron. The whole poem revolves around a treason plotted by a renegade among vile infidels.
In this rude poem which carries the noblest spirit of the chansons de geste, the soul of feudal chivalry climbs to its height of loyal expiation for overweening bravery. The battle-note is given in Roland’s words, as Oliver descries the masses of paynim closing in around that valiant rear-guard.
Said Oliver: “Sir comrade, I think we shall have battle with these Saracens.”
Replied Roland: “God grant it! Here must we hold for our king. A man should suffer for his lord, endure heat and cold, though he lose hair and hide. Let each one strike his best, that no evil song be sung of us. The paynim are in the wrong, Christians in the right!”[695]
Then follows Oliver’s prudent solicitation, and Roland’s fatal refusal to sound his horn and recall Charles and his host: “Please God and His holy angels, France shall not be so shamed through me; better death than such dishonour. The harder we strike the more the emperor will love us.” Oliver can be stubborn too; for when the fight is close to its fell end, he swears that Roland shall never wed his sister Aude, if, beaten, he sound that horn.[696]