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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2014
“The Song of Roland: How the Middle Ages Aren’t Old” describes how a medieval epic can illuminate not only oppressive imperial histories but also contain resistance and critique. By highlighting the tension between hegemonic claims and hybrid practices, students become attuned to the ongoing circulation of divisive discourses and also learn ways to identify openings for mutuality. I propose several ways for instructors to expand their engagement with unfamiliar literatures: How can we embrace translation and the spirit of the curious amateur to grow our own knowledge and that of our students? Finally, I describe teaching techniques that foster pluralistic social dynamics in the classroom. Social learning increases students’ ability to engage sincerely across differences without the pressure to reach agreement. By providing platforms for students to safely self-disclose personal and academic backgrounds, and then connecting them to the course materials, instructors can amplify the social impact of learning itself.
1 The Song of Roland, trans. Glyn Burgess (New York: Penguin, 1990).
2 My thanks to all the students in the course for dynamic discussions and open-minded engagement; special thanks to Ziad Al-Shamsie, Alexander Johnson, and Bilqis Dowadu for sharing their course notes. Research assistance for the course was provided by Noah J. Smith and Taylor Payer, with funding from Dartmouth’s James O. Freedman Presidential Scholars Program and the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding.
3 These examples and others throughout this essay are drawn from my book Creole Medievalism: Colonial France and Joseph Bédier’s Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 164–193.
4 Warren, , Creole Medievalism, 173Google Scholar.
5 Warren, , Creole Medievalism, 1–25Google Scholar.
6 I’ve worked through much of this research in Warren, , Creole Medievalism, 172–192Google Scholar.
7 Bhabha, Homi, “Of Mimicry and Man,” The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 85–92Google Scholar.
8 Scott, Virginia, “An Applied Linguist in the Literature Classroom,” The French Review 74 (2001): 538–549Google Scholar; previously discussed in Warren, , “The Song of Roland Across the Curriculum,” Approaches to Teaching the Song of Roland, eds. William W. Kibler and Leslie Zarker Morgan (New York: Modern Language Association, 2006), 165–170Google Scholar.
9 Quayson, Ato, Ganguly, Debjani, and Kortenaar, Neil ten, “Editorial: New Topographies,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 1 (2014): 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 10.
10 Warren, , “Translating in the Zone,” New Medieval Literatures 9 (2007): 191–198CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 The month before I started teaching this course, I opened an Academia.edu profile. At some point, I decided to post course materials that might have appeal beyond my classroom—syllabus and core bibliographies. Around the time we were reading the Song of Roland, someone in Egypt found the syllabus by searching “French nationalism Song of Roland.” I can only hope that person found some tools for both confirming and challenging the search phrase.
12 Related examples of contemporary medievalisms can be found in Davis, Kathleen and Altschul, Nadia, eds., Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World: The Idea of “The Middle Ages” outside Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Lampert, Lisa, Medieval Literature and Postcolonial Studies (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Warren, Michelle R., “ ‘The Last Syllable of Modernity’: Race, Gender, and Chaucer in the Caribbean,” Postmedieval 6.1 (2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: forthcoming.
13 Warren, , Creole Medievalism, 164–166Google Scholar; Warren, , “Relating Philology, Practicing Humanism,” PMLA 125.2 (2010): 283–288CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Behdad, Ali, “Critical Historicism,” American Literary History 20 (2008): 286–299CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 292.