I know we're going to talk about these topics in class tomorrow, but this is mostly to post the question in the hope someone else will be able to make more sense out of this than I can.
I keep thinking there should be some sort of connection between Floripas's magical girdle and the two giant babies. The babies die for want of their mother's milk, essentially because Charlemagne is unable to provide them with nourishment. Floripas, on the other hand, is able to provide nourishment to the knights through her magic girdle. I can't help but think that it should be the other way around. Why is Floripas, a Saracen, able to nourish the Christians while a Christian can not nourish the Saracen? Is it simply because Floripas was already a Christian even if she wasn't officially a Christian? Does it lie in the baby giants not accepting the food that Charlemagne offers? If so, would that go back to the question from RSZ about "what if my neighbor wants to die?"? Is this a way of absolving the Christians of the blame for the giant babies' deaths? Charlemagne did not cause their deaths, they caused their own deaths by not accepting the food they were offered?
I'm also wondering if it could have to do with the substance of food itself. Food is an important marker of identity, and what we don't eat can be just as clear a marker as what we do eat. Floripas' girdle feeds magically and helps the knights avoid eating Saracen food. The babies, on the other hand, are offered actual food but reject it and die for want of their mother's milk. Does this symbolically indicate they are offered the chance at a new identity (which they should have already received through baptism) but choose to retain their old one?
I'm curious if anyone has any insight into this.
I wonder if the giant babies don't represent the "excess" (in Cohen's terms) of Saracen-ness which, despite Charlemagne's desire, can't be assimilated into the Christian fold in the same way that Floripas and Ferumbras can be? To be a giant is, by definition, to be in excess--to be beyond the normal size. And this monstrousness does seem to be one of the explicit markers in the text of Saracen difference from the Christians. The fact that Charlemagne christens the babies Oliver and Roland seems significant in this regard. Given that the two knights are themselves still alive, the naming might suggest the giant babies as, again, a kind of excess or remainder (they are remainders in the more literal sense that they are what remains of the giants after the parents have been killed)--the Oliver and Roland beyond the "actual" Oliver and Roland. Charlemagne is pleased with his "adoption" of the babies as he thinks they "shalle be myghty men of honde" (3029)--perhaps mightier, by virtue of their giantness than their non-giant, Christian namesakes? Might the text be offering the babies as that which must be sacrificed/lost in order for Floripas and Ferumbras' conversions to gain, for lack of a better word, legitimacy?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kristina that there seems a connection to be made between the failure of Charlemagne's party to feed the babies and Floripas' ability to provide a kind of nourishment for the Twelve. I would just point out that the men are only able to make use of the girdle the one time before losing it: the fact that it's Roland--that is, one of the Christians--who unwittingly tosses the girdle--attached to its thief--out the window, seems significant. The text can't let them keep the thing, if for no other reason than that it would bring the plot, and with it the dramatic tension, to a halt. So neither Saracen magic nor monstrousness can be maintained by the Christians--they both most be expelled.