In Class Activity or Online Discussion: Song of Roland Literary Quick Take
Overview
The literary quick takes are weekly discussions and in-class activities that I use to frame the text for the students. This is mostly formative and graded based on engagement.
Literary Quick Takes
I use this for group discussion in both online and in-class formats. It is intended to allow students to explore the meaning of the text in relation to themselves and to engage in meaningful discussion with peers.
n the Analysis for Song of Roland, we spent quite a lot of time dissecting how the politics of the Frankish government transformed an epic about chivalry and faith into a political statement meant to drive the fervor for a new crusade. However, when it comes to demonizing the enemy, Dr. Shay and Dr. Weil, a well-known critic of the Iliad, identify singular sources for the desire to demonize the other.
Dr. Weil notes in her work on the Iliad:
With the Hebrews, misfortune was a sure indication of sin and hence a legitimate object of contempt; to them, a vanquished enemy was abhorrent to God himself and condemned to expiate all sorts of crimes - this is a view that makes cruelty permissible and indeed indispensable.
For both Shay and Weil, monotheism primed these cultures to the need to demonize others and maintain a war-time position that “insists on turning every story into a war of good and evil and a drama of blame and punishment” (Shay 118). I want to introduce another idea. Later in the semester, we will talk more extensively about a concept called Orientalism. Here is a brief introduction:
We can see how propaganda plays a significant role in manipulating the narrative. However, we have also seen how the demonizing of the enemy can lead to the "betrayal of what is right" for the warrior, especially if that discrepancy between the propagandist literature and the truth is exposed. Do you agree that it is a shared attribute of monotheistic cultures that leads to demonization, or does it have more to do with the imperialist agenda?