A number of scholars of literature, history, and anthropology have recognized that the old distinction made by Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss between gift giving and violence is no longer tenable.1 Lévi-Strauss suggested that the opposition between gift and violence was largely homologous with the opposition between friend and enemy. More recently, however, scholars have noted that gift giving often includes highly aggressive elements, while violence can be a socially constrained and regulated tactic that can be understood as a form of reciprocity that is not always dissimilar from the reciprocity of gift giving.

At the same time, it has also been recognized that both forms of reciprocity need to be understood in the light of a concept of the sacred. In particular, practices of socially regulated reciprocity – giving and violent taking – can only be fully understood if analyzed in relation to certain sacred “kept” items that individuals and groups seek to keep out of circulation, such as the ceremonial Sacred Pipe of certain Native American tribes or relics held by medieval churches and monasteries.3 These kept items are essential to the authority, legitimacy, or identity of the possessor. Within the realm of Mediterranean studies, the same argument is made using the terms “honor” (associated with both gifts and violence) and “grace” (associated with the sacred). The pursuit of honor can only be understood – and controlled – within the framework of grace.

Individuality and Identity in the Middle Ages

Within the field of medieval studies, a number of interrelated terms and concepts centered around the idea of the individual and individual identity have drawn a great deal of critical attention over the years. If we begin by citing Louis Dumont's definition of such an individual from his Essays on Individualism – ‘the independent, autonomous, and thus essentially nonsocial moral being” (Dumont 1986:25) – then broadly speaking, we can say that during much of the history of medieval studies, scholars largely rejected the possibility of such individuals in the Middle Ages. But in the 1960s and 1970s, a number of scholars began to point to at least the avatars of modern individualism in the Middle Ages. Among the most prominent examples which one could cite are Marie-Dominique Chénu's L'Eveil de la conscience dans la civilisation médiévale (1969) and colin Morris's The Discovery of the Individual 1050–1200 (1972). This trend produced a contrary response, epitomized in its early form by evelyn vitz's argument that medieval individual identity was always a matter of merely quantitative difference (being more beautiful, more heroic, etc.) and never a question of qualitative distinctions which we might call (from a modern perspective) “individualistic” (vitz 1975).

Up to this point, we have been analyzing antagonistic giving and the integrity-drive with an economistic approach. The honor accruing to givers expresses an underlying socioeconomic power, which is banked in the form of honor. More precisely, honor from giving expresses social ties and social obligations (“debts”) which are owed to the holder of the honor. The honor is convertible to goods and services which are the means of exercising power. Honor is thus a classic form of symbolic capital in the sense that Bourdieu uses the term in his economistic analysis of gift culture (1977, esp. Ch. 4). More prosaically, honor is the currency of the warrior aristocracy. As economic anthropologist C.A. Gregory says, “gift production must be understood as the process of production of symbols” (1982:91). But there is more at stake in this notion of the symbol than just economics. The emphasis which Duby places on the will in his remarks cited in the previous chapter, as well as Wace's interest in the dual emotions of love and fear, allows the economic and political to bleed into the ethical and psychological domains, and reinforces the notion of identity elaborated by Strathern. In this chapter, we will explore this second component of identity, honor, power and integrity more fully.

The importance of gratuity and spontaneity in gift-giving has been widely noted. For this reason no doubt, charters recording gifts in the eleventh century often stressed that the gift was “spontaneous,” and that any counter-gifts were provided purely out of “charity,” and not as part of a negotiation (Tabuteau 1988:21–2).

An Epic of Aggressive Identity Formation

An appreciation of the symbolic capital which plunder represented helps to better understand an epic which has always seemed anomalous in its concern with money and quantification – The Poem of the Cid. This epic, which dates from the end of the twelfth century, is a classic story of the rise of an individual through the construction of de facto social power, as opposed to inherited, juridical or public power and authority, in a fluid social context which left large openings for performative success. The epic is rife with precise accounts of the capture and distribution of money and other material forms of wealth, especially war horses – accounts which are comparatively absent from many other European epics. Thus it appears strikingly bourgeois and commercial to many critics, and even anti-noble. Yet the apparent anomaly is in fact simply a more explicit rendering of the same ethos which dominates all early medieval epics, that of symbolic giving and taking.

The Cid can be summarized as follows: the Cid is a lower-level noble, who despite great military success has been punished and ordered into exile by his king, apparently for withholding gift tributes owed the king from his own takings; he begins his adventures as an outsider whose only status lies in the minimum qualification of blood nobility which is necessary to enter the context of giving and taking. The Cid's nobility is emphasized throughout, even if that noble status is not especially elevated.

Roland is hardly unique as an example of the supplemental hero. In fact, supplementally is a key feature of medieval heroes in several traditions. In the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, an epic from around the year 1200 which will be discussed in more detail in the following chapter, the hero Siegfried shows the same types of behavior. Arriving at the renowned castle of Worms, he is warmly greeted by the brothers of Kriemhild, whom he hopes to marry, but goes out of his way to increase the odds against his success:

Introduction

In classic gift theory, the most central gift of all is the woman, given by men in marriage exchanges. in theory, women would play the same symbolic role as other gifts – being symbolic rewards for internally-driven accomplishments, as well as symbols of ties between men. In The Song of Roland, Oliver essentially treats his sister Aude this way in his dealings with Roland. As a corollary to this claim, the most central danger in a classical gift economy would be that men would begin to desire women themselves, and to be diverted from their masculine-oriented world of symbolic relationships and accomplishments. The woman would move from object to subject, and men's actions would become motivated by externally-oriented desires.

This description is really a simplistic caricature of classic gift theory. Recent studies have shown the many failures of this simplistic model to explain social process adequately (Barraud et al. 1994:102–3; Gregory 1982:33, 63; Strathern 1988), and medievalists have likewise pointed out the ways in which the exchange of women is much more problematic than such theories would suggest, especially in that the women are hardly passive objects, but rather socially active subjects themselves (Kay 1995:15ff). But the caricature has a long history, not just in recent anthropological theory, but in the broader theories of culture expounded in some Western literature. In particular, medieval epics of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries presented – or at least attempted to present to their audience – just such a reading of the world of courtliness and the world of the romance genre.

The Song of Roland and the Death of Reciprocity

In one of the most familiar scenes of medieval literature, Roland is nominated by his enemy Ganelon to be head of charlemagne's rearguard as the French army returns victoriously from spain through the pass of Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees in The Song of Roland. This nomination leads to an escalating confrontation which sets up Roland's eventual death and the destruction of the rearguard. Most importantly for us, the scene enacts a dynamic of reciprocity and its refusal which is crucial to understanding the nature of the epic hero. But the scene is merely the culmination of a growing conflict between Roland and Ganelon which centers on issues of giving and taking.

The epic, which dates from perhaps the end of the eleventh century, opens in Spain, where Charlemagne has defeated all the Saracens except for those of Sara-gossa. The desperate Saracens promise to offer Charlemagne gifts and hostages in exchange for his return to Spain, at which point they will follow him there and convert to christianity. The baron Ganelon urges that the offer be accepted in order to avoid further war, while charlemagne's nephew Roland mocks him for this espousal of peace over war. Ganelon's advice is taken, however. Then, when an ambassador must be selected to go to the Saracens (the last ones having been treacherously murdered by them), Roland suggests Ganelon, and then mocks him once again, this time for his hesitation to undertake the dangerous mission.

In the medieval French epic Girart de Vienne, the attested version of which has been dated to around 1180, a poor knight named Renier arrives at Charlemagne's court, and offers to serve the king so that he and his brother may win “honor and reward” (l. 681). Charlemagne is not willing to take the young men into his household, but does offer them a nice sum of money, lodging, and new suits of clothing – fine gifts indeed for poorly dressed, unknown strangers. By the rules of classical gift theory, the strangers should be required to accept such gifts, and to reciprocate at a later time. Additionally, bonds of solidarity should be established between the parties, thanks to Charlemagne's generous offer. But instead, Renier reacts angrily, stating that “n'ai song d'avoir, ne sui pas marcheant” (“I need no money, I am no merchant born”) (l. 695) and continues “einz mes ling-nage n'ala avoir querant” (“None of my line have longed for wealth before”) (l. 701). He says that if he owned the whole palace, he would simply give it away (ll. 697–9). The exchange is the first encounter in a relationship which, though temporarily patched up, will ultimately turn into catastrophic rebellion.

Why does Renier unequivocally reject the gift, especially in such angry words, and why does he feel that it is an insult, as Charlemagne apparently indeed intended? This scene seems to correspond to nothing in Marcel Mauss's famous depiction of gift-giving which forms the basis of classical theory.

Keeping and Transcendence

In the preceding chapters we have come upon instances in which the central goal of an individual seems to be not to give, (or to take), but to keep – recall Roland's concern with his sword Durendal. The importance of inalienable lands – technically the “honor” of a lord – was also mentioned. In these cases, the individuals are not interested in giving these items away, despite the honor that accrues to giving. It is better to keep than to give. And the violence that centers around these objects is for once less about aggressive taking than defensive protection.

Indeed, from a long-term viewpoint, the exploits of William the Conqueror, Robert Guiscard, or the poetic version of the Cid, could be seen as centering on taking and giving, but all in the ultimate pursuit of integrity: an integrity which would allow an end to dependency and even horizontal reciprocity. More prosaically, these individuals want political independence in the form of a heritable, “keepable” title and a crown.

Of course, heritable titles and lands are the antithesis of the fluid social settings where performative identity can be easily established. It seems initially quite ironic that each of these exemplars of performance should manage in one form or another to solidify his positions through the acquisition of a sacred status which is ultimately no longer given or taken, but simply kept.

Modes of Reflection and Alterity, Medieval and Modern

For the most part in this book, we have not engaged directly with the complex medieval debate about the relative importance of oral and written traditions in the documented epic texts which we possess, though one important exception was the discussion of The Poem of the Cid. There seem to be strong arguments to believe that there were well developed traditions of both oral composition and performance in early medieval France, Spain, Germany, and elsewhere. It may not be possible to assert that the documented epic texts we possess are direct records of those traditions, nor would one want to argue that those traditions themselves were purely oral and uninfluenced by written texts or monastic culture. But there is good reason to believe that the texts in this book, in their themes and structure, reflect an origin and development in a culture where oral composition and/or performance was a predominant feature. This performance was public and given in settings that were, to a greater or lesser extent, ritualized. Much of the argument in Chapters 4 through 9 assumes that the reception of the texts occurred as “ritualized performances” in public, oral settings as defined in Chapter 4 (see references and definition, page 72). Similarly, much of the argument in Chapters 1 through 5 assumes that the performance of giving and taking occurred in such settings as well, part of the production of symbolic value.

In Geoffrey Malaterra's early twelfth-century chronicle of the Norman conquest of sicily and southern italy, he reports an encounter between the armies of Robert Guiscard and Peter of Tyre. Robert, seeing the great wealth of the opposing army and leaders, considers how he can obtain it. After consideration, he proposes a discussion in the open field between the two forces, involving only himself and Peter. All seems to go well, but then just as the two leaders arise to head back to their respective armies, Robert physically grabs Peter and “interdum portando, interdum volutando, interdum trahendo, usque ad suos perduxit” (“now carrying, now rolling, now dragging, brought him back to [Robert's] men,” De rebus gestis 1.17). This amusing (for us) and outrageous (for Peter) event would seem to be a blatant breach of the rules of reciprocity and negotiation. The Normans are jubilant about the event, on the other hand (“gaudentes quasi de triompho,” “exulting as if in a victory”). Peter is not killed however: in typical medieval fashion, he is held hostage. After a few days, he ultimately buys his freedom “pecuniam mira-bilem persolvens” (“with an enormous ransom”). Robert's extraction of money, from this and other sources, goes immediately and “abundanter” to his military companions, strengthens his own position militarily, and quickly leads to the capitulation of various Calabrian cities and their agreement to pay tribute.

As seen in chapters 6 and 7, The Song of Roland, Raoul of Cambrai, and Gormont and Isembard examine the spectacular and often catastrophic consequences of crossing the boundary between social reciprocity and heroic, asocial integrity, for both the individual hero and the warrior aristocracy as a whole. Those texts emphasize the dangerous potential of the integrity-drive which underlies the performative system of giving and taking. But they also signal – through the specifically literary persona of the hero – their speculative and reflective nature and the supra-real quality of the events they narrate. The hero's gratuitous breaking of social reciprocity is also a breaking away from immediate identity with the epic audience itself. Despite the catastrophic violence narrated in the texts, they all insist on the redemptive possibilities of the act of narration itself as a social ritual and a form of reciprocity.

The mid-twelfth-century Coronation of Louis, part of the Old French William of Orange cycle, offers both a more comic and ultimately a more pessimistic view of the efficacy of performance. It portrays its hero, William of Orange, in a Quixotic light at times, and points to a continuing aristocratic fantasy – or better, nostalgia – for a sacred kept beyond the limits of reciprocity, which performance-based social structures seem unable to deliver. Like The Nibelungenlied, this epic offers a solution to the dilemma, but in this case, the solution lies in a reorientation of the integrity drive within the context of monastically-envisioned Christianity and a strongly religious conception of Chivalry.