Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Cogito, cilt.17, sa.3, ss.239-253, 2025 (Scopus)
This article reexamines the twelfth-century Old French La Chanson de Roland (henceforth LCR) through the critical lens of monster theory. LCR constructs Saracens as grotesque, idolatrous, and demonic adversaries—monsters whose otherness justifies Frankish violence and religious supremacy. However, this paper proposes a reverse reading: if monstrosity is defined by traits such as excessive violence, moral absolutism, and symbolic otherness, then those criteria implicate the Frankish characters in monstrous behavior. Roland’s prideful obstinacy and the imagery of Saracen deaths signal a sanctified form of Christian monstrosity embedded within the poem’s ideological fabric. This article argues that monstrosity is not inherent but constructed, relational, and politically functional. Uebel’s Foucauldian perspective complements this view, showing how the binary between Frank and Saracen is mutually constitutive and ideologically unstable. The article reveals how LCR projects cultural anxieties outward onto racialized enemies, thereby masking internal contradictions in Christian violence and identity. By reversing the monster gaze, this paper destabilizes the moral binaries of medieval epic literature and promotes a more balanced historiographical reading. It contends that monstrosity, far from being confined to the Saracen Other, is a narrative weapon wielded to maintain hegemony, offering critical insights into the ethics of representation in premodern literature.