Two Works of Medieval Literature

This study will provide a comparative analysis of two works of medieval literature from France and Japan--The Tale of the Heike and The Song of Roland. The study will consider the warrior code of the two cultures, prevailing religious beliefs, chivalry and the status of women, the concept of honor, and loyalty to the lord. Both works are representative of the literary traditions prevalent in the two centuries and cultures of their creation, with emphasis on the militaristic nature of the life lived by the good, courageous, loyal warrior.

Although both works emphasize a religious or transcendent element, the French tale being Christian, the Japanese being Buddhist, both also are marked by suggestions that despite all the heroics in battle, humans suffer deeply and despair at times of knowing the meaning of life. Despite the fact that the French warriors fight and kill pagans and die for Jesus Christ and Christianity above all, Charlemagne at the end of Roland is driven to declare, "God, how tiring is my life!" (Roland 175). At the very beginning of Heike, we read of the underlying world view that colors the Japanese epic:

The sound of the Gion Shoja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind (Heike 23).

Still, despite the claims of exhaustion and impermanence, the

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oth works together, again, is a sense of the weariness or vanity of all human enterprise, despite what appears to be the glorification of military might and victory. As Keene writes of the Heike: "The prevailing tone of the work stems from the defeats and deaths, not from the triumphs," from "men who do not wish to kill" and "victories that bring no joy" (Keene 89). The roles of women in both works is peripheral at best. Each work depicts a man's world where women are portrayed as either victims or inspirations for the male warriors. Women play a more prominent role in Heike, but in both works, women are generally passive figures. In Heike, women are consorts of emperors (38) and regents (51), "past [their] prime" at "twenty-two or twenty-three" (38), the passive and fainting vessels for the possession of gods (51), and so on. If women are generally passive and emotional characters in Heike, they at least play a number of different roles. In Roland they are even less essential. The role of the woman in the world of the warrior in medieval France is typified by Alde, the betrothed of Roland. As Cantor writes, in the chivalric sense, "the woman becomes for the nobleman the ideal lady who symbolizes . . . all virtue and beauty

Category: Literature - T