1. La Chanson de Roland, ed. and trans. Ian Short, Librairie
générale française (Paris, 1990), p. 38, l. 178: "Guenes i vint, ki la
traïsun fist." Subsequent references to this edition are given by line number in the
text.
2.
Marie de France, "Lanval," Lais de Marie de France, ed. Karl Warnke, trans.
Laurence Harf-Lancner (Paris, 1990), p. 156, ll. 439-441, "Li reis parla vers sun vassal, /
que jo vus oi numer Lanval; / de felunie le reta / e d'un mesdit l'achaisuna." Subsequent
references to these texts are given by line numbers in the text.
3. Richard Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven, 1953), pp.
221-22.
4. Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual: 1050-1200 (Toronto, 1987).
5. Alan Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism (Oxford, 1978), p. 5.
6. Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High
Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982), p. 107.
7. Emanuel J. Mickel, Jr., "Judicium Dei and the Structure of La Chanson
de Roland," in Studies in Honor of Hans-Erich Keller: Medieval French and Occitan
Literature and Romance Linguistics, ed. Rupert T. Pickens (Kalamazoo, 1993), p. 45.
8. Ganelon and Marsile "were both external enemies in the sense that they were
outside the pale of society, and the opprobrious word 'felon' was applied indifferently to
each." Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, p. 243.
9. Roland is Charlemagne's nephew and either Ganelon's step-son or son-in-law.
Ganelon is
Roland's parastre, which would seem to imply kinship between Ganelon and Charlemagne.
In any case, it is ultimately Roland's service and not his kinship that is emphasized in the charge
against Ganelon.
page 47
10. John Halverson writes that their hanging "was very far from customary,"
and that "what we may have in this moment of zeal is a kind of symbolic damning of the
whole idea and existence of the kin group as a political force." See Halverson,
"Ganelon's Trial," Speculum 42 (1967), 688.
11. R. Howard Bloch, "New Philology and Old French," Speculum
65 (1990), 50.
12. Lanval is representative of the "lower nobility" of younger, unmarried
sons; see Eric Köhler, quoted by Bloch, "New Philology and Old French," pp.
49.
13. "Un sairement l'en guagera, / e li reis le nus pardurra. / E s'il puet aveir sun
guarant / e s'amie venist avant / e ceo fust veirs que il en dist, / dunt la reïne se marrist, / de
ceo avra il bien merci, / quant pur vilté nel dist de li" (451-58). "He will
pledge
an oath, and the king will leave it to us. And if he can produce his guarantee and if his lady will
arrive, and if there is truth in what he spoke, which so angered the queen, he will have mercy, for
he did not speak out of disdain."
14. Sharon Kinoshita, "Cherchez La Femme: Feminist Criticism and Marie de
France's Lai de Lanval," Romance Notes 34 (1994), 272.
15. David Aers writes on this "inward" turning phenomenon, tracing it from
Augustine forward, in "A Whisper in the Ear of Early Modernists," Culture and
History 1350-1600: Essays on English Communities, Identities, and Writing, ed. David Aers
(Detroit, 1992), pp. 181-84.
16. John F. Benton, "Consciousness of Self and Perceptions of
Individuality," in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L.
Benson and Giles Constable, with Carol D. Lanham (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 271-87.
17. Benton, "Consciousness of Self," pp. 272-73.
18. Bynum, Jesus as Mother, p. 106-9.
19. In this paper, I have considered only male subjectivity, by accident of the texts I
examined; to bring in the issue of gender would necessarily complicate the matter, as a discussion
of female agency in the Middle Ages would necessarily differ from one of male agency.
