I found The Sultan of Babylon much more complex in some ways than Floris and Blancheflour. Partly because of its length, obviously, but also because of its large, shifting cast of characters, the poem feels much more chaotic to me. Among the questions that emerged as I was reading, two focused on the portrayal of the Sultan.
First, I wonder why the poem spends so much time, especially at the beginning, narrating the story from the Sultan's perspective. One would expect the poem to tell its story from the prospective of the protagonist(s), but instead we get these long descriptions of the Sultan's motivations for provoking war and his responses when things don't go his way. I wonder if the poet does this intentionally to lead us to sympathize with the Sultan before pushing him away at the very end with the violent scene of his refusal to convert. Like Charlemagne, the Sultan has two people who are dear to him, "Sire Ferumbras, my sone so dere.../ And in my doghter Dame Florypas" (93-96). Yet at the end of the poem, he curses Ferumbras, and "His soule was fet to helle" (3171-3188). Perhaps this is a stretch, but I wonder if the poet is unsuccessfully trying a form of neighbor-love. He ventriloquizes the Sultan's experience, gives him a few sympathetic features, and then rips that apart for us (the Christian medieval audience) with the Sultan's final vituperation.
As a subset of this question, I'm also wondering why the Sultan keeps threatening to reject his gods, being rebuked by priests, and then pleading for forgiveness. This happens several times throughout the poem. Each moment is marked with language that sounds very "Christian": "The prestis assoyled him of that synne,/ Ful lowly for him prayinge" (2453-2454). The Sultan almost sounds Catholic here, confessing, doing penance, and being absolved of his unfaithfulness. One possible reason for these repeated movements toward apostasy could be that the poet is trying to set the Sultan in opposition to Charlemagne, who remains faithful to God throughout the poem. Another reason could again be an attempt at gentrifying or assimilating the Sultan via this Christian language, an attempt which ultimately fails. These repeated apostasies could either be sympathetic (the Sultan recognizes the emptiness of his religion in medieval Christian terms) or non-sympathetic (the Sultan's paganism is exacerbated by his tempestuous unbelief).
So how is the audience supposed to relate to the Sultan, if we take him as a neighbor figure? How does the poet or narrator relate to him? As usual, all of our questions about neighbor-love seem to be applicable here.
I actually found myself more sympathetic to the Sultan than any of the other characters in the text. The Sultan is at least consistent in his behavior (even if that consistency is to be inconsistent when it comes to his faith). On the other hand, Charlemagne seems petty and his Twelve act as common thugs. The irony of his statement on traitors and treachery at the end of the romance is remarkable: it is the Sultan who was the victim of the most profound treachery - both son and daughter turn on him with little apparent justification (and the Christians beat the Sultan through numerous smaller treacheries). Yet Charlemagne raises them to great heights within his Christian realm after they convert. Treachery, it seems, is relative.
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting moment I found, that perhaps we could relate to neighbor love, was the fight between Olyvere and Ferumbras, which is conducted in a clearly chivalric manner. Before coming at each other on horseback, Ferumbras needs his helmet. So, "Olyvere halpe him it to onlase ... Ferumbras thanked him of his grace / And curteisly to him gan lowte" (38). Then they fight it out with Ferumbras eventually losing and agreeing to convert to Christianity. Yet I could not find one other instance of this sort of behavior: instead, Charlemagne's peers slaughter the Sultan's messengers (described as knights), and generally give little heed to any sort of code of conduct, killing and maiming with the least provocation and no remorse. Indeed, when Marsedage approaches the castle, rather than fight an 'honorable' combat, Sir Gy throws a javelin from the top of the wall: "he smote him throwe herte and liver in fere." And Floripe's response? She "lough with loude steven" (68). The disparity between the Olyvere/Ferumbras encounter and everything else in the romance is striking. What made Ferumbras more worthy of being treated as a "neighbor"?
I really like Evelyn's questions about the portrayal of the Sultan, because it made me realize how little I wanted to think about him. It's so much more fun to revel in Floripas's vengefully crazy love, or to wonder about how the the tough guys, Guy and Roland and Oliver, will get themselves out of scrapes or handle their indebtedness to a woman, or to be bemused by Firumbras's sudden change of heart. And if we're thinking relationally, the questions of conversion, romantic love, and betrayal all seem pressing. This is one of those stories that invites us to stop and ponder why love is the self-evident inspiration for conquest. Floripas doesn't know Guy but she loves him ("A, him have I loved many a day / And yet knowe I him noght" (1891-92)), and that love turns her into something like wonder woman, bashing heads and killing anyone who keeps her beloved from a good meal. Can you have conquest without love? Love without conquest?
ReplyDeleteBut reading Evelyn's post it occurred to me that my disinterest in the Sultan may be symptomatic of the difficulty of neighbor love. It's always so much more interesting to think about passion and romance and lovers instead, but even if the neighbor love in the text is "unsuccessful" (and I'm curious to hear what others think of that claim), it can prompt us to think about why the least appealing character may be precisely the character we need to think with.
I am also very interested in Ferumbras in this romance, and I can certainly elaborate in class what I'll sketch out briefly here...
ReplyDeleteI have studied this romance for a while, and it is forming part of my dissertation, and I'm currently trying to think through how the neighbor theory we've been reading will intersect with my earlier reading of the text. I absolutely agree with Scott that Ferumbras DOES stand out as a character, and his encounter with Oliver stands out in this text as being very different from anything else we see. I have argued elsewhere that Ferumbras' conversion brings him dangerously close to the Christian community--too close for comfort, because one of the huge identity markers in this text (differentiating Christians from heathens/Saracens) is religious difference. Therefore despite his conversion, I have noticed ways that this text subtly undermines these efforts and attempts to reinscribe difference between the converted Ferumbras and the other Christian knights (one of these tactics being that he virtually disappears after his baptism and plays no major role in this text after that).
But the similarity that seems threatening, according to that argument, is a sameness to the Christians that doesn't seem unknowable or frightening in the way we've been discussing the encounter with the neighbor is frightening. So if we apply neighbor theory here, what do we find? Is Ferumbras another gentrified neighbor, who is brought close for ideological purposes of asserting Christianity's superiority and then pushed aside? Or is there some way we could read his similarity as frightening because what he shows the Christians is the frightening elements of their own community? Thinking out loud here, I wonder whether the romance's interest in disloyalty may not be something that worries the Christian community about itself (even though the Sultan, as Scott pointed out, is the recipient of the most and perhaps closest betrayals). But Rome is brought down by an insider at the beginning of this text, Roland and Charlemagne nearly come to blows when R refuses to fight F, and in other Charlemagne romances Ganelon is a HUGE figure of betrayal, one that leads to Oliver and Roland's deaths. So Ferumbras's very change of heart, though it is arguably what the Christian community would assert it WANTS to see, provokes its thoughts about the betrayers and potential traitors in its own midst. This is why the text subtly resists Ferumbras' conversion.
I wonder, as a complete side note, what is going on with Charlemagne's attempt to raise the baby giants!
I looked away for a moment, and all this smartness broke out!
ReplyDeleteIt's very interesting to think about how this text plays with and against homosocial and hetersexual relations betw. Christians and Saracens.
I don't have much to add to this debate other than the following things to consider: when Peter the Venerable addresses potential Muslim converts to Christianity in his Liber contra sectam . . . Saracenorum, he uses tropes of love. He addresses them as his "beloved" and emphasizes the love and "yearning" he feels for his potential co-religionists.
I'll also be interested to hear everyone's responses to Jeffrey Cohen's essay--which we will read for next Tuesday, and which Bethany helpfully directed us by way of an email link! [Thanks to B.]
I want to make a quick shot re: ventriloquism.
ReplyDeleteIt seems a concern of the class that the English narrators we've been reading might be putting their own words into their characters' mouths. This is literally true of every writer ever. If there is to be an "other" character, he must be ventriloquized to the same extent as any other character. Pun intended.
The question, then, is not whether the narrator is putting words into the other's mouth, but if they are sufficiently close to what we might consider believable. That is, our concern is whether or not an utterance pierces our willing suspension of disbelief.
What I am urging, then, is for us to remember that we are disbelieving. If we can include the Man of Law, the romance writer, R/S/Z, and Kristeva under the adumbration of "Western" (and I think we can, though this might be an interesting discussion with regard to R), then we have yet to hear word one from the mouth of the other.
Reading that over... I think I'm taking a polemic posture that I don't mean. This shouldn't be a guilt trip, as if we somehow should be in comparative lit rather than English. I like English.