Comments on: Word of the Day: Termagant

By: Cat

Cat — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 03:44:17 +0000

About Le Chanson de Roldan, you must remember the Juglar who used to create those histories used to be very partialized about his religion (catholicism) so he adds stuff, disguised data, that reveals his fanatism about his religion. You must take a look at the historic events that were happening on that time so, you would realize the Juglar is just showing his ignorance about other religions, so it doesn’t really matter who is it; the only thing he wants to make clear is their gods (suposedly sarracens) are not as good as his own god.

Congrats for your blog and excuse me if there is any error, im not very used to write in english.

By: sharon

sharon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Do you really need to look for anything authentic? It’s surely just something made up by Europeans, re-using one of those many, many options for something pagan, sinister, dark & nasty, etc (Thor-Wotan sounds a good candidate to me – lump the Greek and Norse all in together with them infidel Moors and stir vigorously). Mind you, the absence of Allah *is* odd.

By: Anand

Anand — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

fascinating. and brilliant.
almost completely unrelated – what do you think of maria rosa menocal’s book, and the parts about the translators/translations… that world view would make this sort of fuck-up highly unlikely, no?

By: Abdul-Walid

Abdul-Walid — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is as brilliant a blog post as I’ve read all week. Nicely done dude.

By: sepoy

sepoy — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Anand and Abdul-Walid: I blush.

Anand: I haven’t read Menocal’s book – just a few reviews. But, yes, that Andalusi world would make this sort of translation unlikely.

By: Sin

Sin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a short paper in a class I was taking on (of all things) Tolkien in my senior year of college, on the Song of Roland. It dealt with Saracens as Muslim doppelgangers, and about the manner in which the Muslims would have had to have a religious trinity that mirrored Christianity. I was always under the impression that the reason a mention of “God” was avoided was because the poet was doing his best to mirror but distance “Mohammadans” from Christians; by acknowledging the existence of a deity, rather than a mortal granted divine stature, he’d have failed in his task.

Just my half-assed theory :)

By: Ben Brumfield

Ben Brumfield — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been reading the Karlamagnus saga lately, and have been amused by a misunderstanding as outlandish as a Muslim “trinity: All the pagan Saxons that Charlemagne fights worship Muhammad! Or rather, they claim to serve the same deity that the Saracens do later in the book.

By: dgm

dgm — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Interesting – especially as the word termagant was until very recently (mid 20th Century) in use in Scots to describe an overly dominant or assertive woman

By: John

John — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It makes sense to me that the trinity of Saracen gods would be a mirror of the Christian trinity. I always assumed that Apollyon was just “Apollo” (which is Apollon in French), although apparently there is a New Testament character – a demon named “Apollyon” as well. As far as Tervagan, my curiosity has been intensified by this fascinating post! I’m not an Arabist, but I’ll send the ones I know here to quibble…

By: The Elfin Ethicist

The Elfin Ethicist — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

History Carnival V

The fifth history carnival is up at ClioWeb. Since I’ve been thinking about literature quite a bit lately, here are some entries that relate to the proper care and feeding of texts: The Little Professor…