Heroes and Marvels of the Middle Ages

233 Pages·2020·20.362 MB·English

by  Jacques Le Goff

Heroes and Marvels
of the
Middle Ages

HERO ES
and MARVELS

of the
MIDD LE AGES
Jacques Le Goff
Translated by
Teresa Lavender Fagan
REAKTION BOOKS LTD
For Hanka (1934–2004)
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
Unit 32, Waterside
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London n1 7ux, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published in English 2020
English-language translation copyright © Reaktion Books 2020
Originally published in French as Héros et merveilles du Moyen Âge,
© Éditions du Seuil, 2005 and 2008
Translated from the French by Teresa Lavender Fagan
This translation does not include the chapter ‘La Mesnie Hellequin’
of the original French edition
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the
publishers
Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
isbn 978 1 78914 212 9
CONTENTS
Preface 7
Introduction 9
Arthur 23
The Castle 33
The Cathedral 47
Charlemagne 61
El Cid 74
The Cloister 81
The Jongleur 89
Knights and Chivalry 99
The Land of Cockaigne 113
Melusina 121
Merlin 131
Pope Joan 137
Reynard 146
Robin Hood 155
Roland 163
Tristan and Iseult 171
Troubadours and Trouvères 179
The Unicorn 185
The Valkyrie 195
References 201
Bibliography 209
Photo Acknowledgements 231
PREFACE
The aim of this book is to reveal the importance of the imaginary
in history, and then to show that the men and women of
the Middle Ages created heroes and marvels that were destined
to inspire dreams in the longue durée, many of them sublimated
in social and material realities of the time: cathedrals, knights,
love (Tristan and Iseult), games and performance (jongleurs,
troubadours and trouvères), exceptional women existing between
God and Satan (Melusina, Pope Joan, Iseult, Valkyrie). I mainly
wanted to follow the avatars of the medieval imaginary in the longue
durée, with its eclipses and awakenings. Those awakenings usually
occurred with Romanticism, and even more so with new means of
artistic expression: film and comics.
In the end, I hope to reveal how truly modern the Middle Ages
really were.
7

INTRODUCTION
In this book I hope to introduce to the reader a new and
developing field of history, the history of the imaginary, defined
here by Évelyne Patlagean:
The field of the imaginary is made up of all the representations
that go beyond the limits posed by findings of experience and
deductive sequences that this allows. That is to say, that each
culture, every society, or every level of a complex society has
its imaginary. In other words, the boundary between the
real and the imaginary is proven to be variable, even though
the territory it crosses always and everywhere remains the
same, since it is none other than the entire realm of human
experience, from the most collectively social to the most
1
intimately personal.
In my book L’Imaginaire médiéval I have also attempted to define
the field, first by distinguishing it from related concepts, foremost
2
that of representation. Patlagean is right when she says that the
imaginary brings together a set of representations, but this very
general term encompasses any mental translation of a perceived
external reality: ‘The imaginary is part of the field of representation,
9