Kings and Captains: Variations on a Heroic Theme

University of Kentucky UKnowledge Comparative Literature Arts and Humanities 1971 Kings and Captains: Variations on a Heroic Theme Charles Moorman University of Southern Mississippi Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Moorman, Charles, "Kings and Captains: Variations on a Heroic Theme" (1971). Comparative Literature. 5. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_comparative_literature/5 KINGS & CAPTAINS This page intentionally left blank 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 @ 1971 by 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 This page intentionally left blank Contents PREFACE ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii Chapter One THE ILlAD r Chapter Two THE ODYSSEY 30 Chapter Three BEOWULF 57 Chapter Four THE SONG OF ROLAND 87 Chapter Five THE NIBELUNGENLlED 109 Chapter Six THE ICELANDlC SAGAS 132 Chapter Seven THE ARTHUR LEGEND 148 NOTES 173 This page intentionally left blank 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 Ice- landic 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 Ro- land does not consider it heroic to summon aid at the begin- ning 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 con- cerned with the more technical problems of source and transmission and structure, they can and should lead to an occa- sional 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 importance of Christianity and paganism in Beowulf are still active topics for debate and engender lifelong enmities among the learned. But in the detailed arguments among the Unitarians, Separatists, and Analysts, in the discussions of the chronology of Bronze Age history, even in the patently literary studies of the Odyssey by Howard W. Clarke and the Iliad by C. M. Bowra, many basic questions remain largely ignored. After all, just what is so heroic about Achilles' conduct, or Agarnemnon's for that matter, in the wretched squabble over a slave girl that opens the Iliad? "'You drunken sot,' [Achilles] cried, 'with the eyes of a dog and the courage of a doe! You never have the pluck to arm yourself and go into battle with the men or join the other captains in an ambush-you would sooner die!"' And who does not, despite the critics, honestly agree and sympathize with the sensible Oliver rather than the apparently monomaniacal Roland? And is not Beowulf in deserting his beloved lord and uncle, the "my Hygelac" whom he constantly praises, in Hygelac's death struggle a coward and a traitor by the standards of the Battle of Mal- don? A fresh look at these heroic works can be both purgative and instructional, especially if we abandon the conventions and restrictions of genre criticism and literary history and so avoid what Bowra calls the 'obstructing prepossessions and distorting loyalties of professional scholars." Not that the discoveries and opinions of scholars and critics are not rele- vant and useful; one would be lost without them. But a reexamination in vacuo of these masterworks may reveal pat- terns and themes obscured by the scholarly convention that makes them conform to a preformed definition of a genre or to a preconceived tradition of literary development. This study, then, attempts no more than its subtitle sug- gests; it advances the theory that the similar circumstances surrounding the composition of these works resulted in a characteristic point of view toward the heroic attitude and its place in society which, though slightly modified by par- ticular conditions from age to age, in turn produced a series of variations upon a common theme-the opposition of king and captain, of responsible administrator and freebooting hero. The study makes no pretentions either to redefining the heroic genre or to rewriting literary history, however tempting occasionally the inclination to do so. Nor does it attempt to solve in any definitive way the complex technical problems of epic origin and transmission over which so much scholarly ink has been spilt, though it does occasionally uti- lize them. If I may be permitted a personal word, I should like to state that I tend to think of myself as an essayist rather than as a scholar or critic. My method of approaching these works is thus eclectic, even contradictory at times, making use as it does of whatever tools-literary history, social and polit- ical history, myth, genre, etc.--seem appropriate at the mo- ment. Like the traditionally objective scholar, I have occasionally weighed opposing scholarly theories; yet unlike the scholar, I have felt free to choose among the alternatives or even to offer compromise solutions on the admittedly sub- jective grounds of literary expediency. Like the New Critics, I am essentially examining each work as though it were autonomous, as though it contained entirely within itself the reason that it is so and not otherwise; yet unlike the New Critics, I have brought to bear upon the work whatever out- side information I felt to be illuminating or helpful to inter- pretation. This strategy, maddening as it must be to the academic purist, seems to me perfectly proper for the essayist, who is after all only a seeker, an experimenter, not a scientist or an advocate. And it is also the proper strategy, I think, for a volume which is intended not only for the specialist (if he will forego his professional irritation), but also for the non- specialist, the general student of literature who finds himself drawn back again and again to those masterpieces which have fostered and shaped the western heroic tradition and which have borne offspring-some robust and hearty, some crippled and perverted-in every age. This page intentionally left blank A portion of the Beowulf chapter of this study was originally published in Modern Language Quarterly, and I am grateful to the editors of that journal for their permission to reprint. While it is impossible for me to acknowledge here all the advice and help I received in the preparation of this study, I should like to thank President W. D. McCain of the Univer- sity of Southern Mississippi for his continued and generous support of my research and my beloved wife whose devotion and support no formal dedication can adequately repay. This page intentionally left blank KINGS & CAPTAINS This page intentionally left blank The 32iad It is revealing to listen to the comments of undergraduates who come to the Iliad without awe and without prior knowledge of its content and tradition except perhaps for a vague notion that it is in some way heroic. For their first impression is not at all what one would expect, the usual mixture of re- spect and boredom with which students begin an assigned "classic," but instead a shocked amusement followed by a mounting interest in the narrative. Perversely enough, too, such students are not in the least put off by the details of battle, for which most critics seem compelled to apologize; furthermore, they are not in the least disturbed by the inter- ference of the gods or by the constantly repeated epithets or by all the other devices which scholars regard as the dated, though historically justifiable, devices of an ancient poet. They will even swallow whole the catalog of ships in Book 2, regarding it, like any other piece of exposition, as a necessary part of the story, happily unaware that it was probably once a separate work and so might be regarded as detachable from the main. It is not at all necessary, or even very profitable, to ap- proach the Iliad as a heroic type and to bring to it our accu- mulated knowledge of the poet's tradition and age.

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