The Hero of Great Deeds: From Albanian Songs of the Frontier Warriors to French Chansons de Geste

Vehbi Miftari,Avdi Visoka

doi:10.7596/taksad.v8i1.1761

Abstract

The hero of the Albanian Frontier Warriors’ Songs is a hero of the great deeds such as the one in the French Chansons de geste , which is a source of inspiration for the notion of deeds / gestures. However, the heroic effect of the deeds differs from the cultural and identity extent, from the genre, the legendary and historical context. Muji and Halili are epic heroes of Albanian Frontier Warriors songs . They act independently or in accordance with other epic heroes, which usually are thirty. Their heroic acts vary from the French epic heroes. They differ even from Roland, because they are primarily motivated by the protection of individuals' possessions and lives and as heroic, epic and erotic adventures, fights of honour, pride, and local identity. Contrary to them, Roland gets more of the size of the community hero, distinguished by protecting cultural and identity norms of a broader character as well as doctrinal. This paper intends to develop a comparative analysis of Albanian Frontier Warriors’ Songs and French Chansons de geste , above all between the songs of the legendary discourse in Albanian early epic literature and the Roland’s song . The aim is to create a perspective between these two heroisms of Albanian and French oral epic, without denying the influence of the song and its hero on creating identity lines.

Highlights

Unlike the Chansons de geste, which minimizes the role of love or the female, in the Albanian Songs of the Frontier Warriors these phenomena suit usually in the form of amour courtois, a concept developed by the French courtois literature
In the Albanian Frontier Warriors' Songs, history is related to the myth, with the belief in the occurrence, but which tries to rise at the level of occurrence, whether the history creates the epic myth / hero at Roland (Zumthor, 1972)
Chansons de geste as a medieval narrative of heroic deeds rises on the myth of the knight who recognizes ethnic and identity missions and goes beyond the narrow individual interests

Summary

Introduction

Albanian Songs of the Frontier Warriors (Alb. "Kangët kreshnike shqipe"), as oral epic songs, are characterised by the legendary discourse created either as an inspiration from the imaginary heroic deeds or with an historical premise that become popular. The song, as a verbal creation, conveys “the echo of the epopee coming from the depth of the centuries” (Thiesse, 2004: 25-27) and the memory of features that make the hero hero everywhere. This echo is the awareness of the existence of “similar” heroes or communities, as entities that have cultivated the same rituals, traditions and customs with us; they have sometimes cultivated the same language and lived roughly in the same territory, constituting a "homogenous community" (Gellner, 1987), distinct from other social communities. The hero and the heroic gestures have been seen within the song influence on creation and conveyance of awareness of common culture, for identity features of the community

Hero and Identity

Now choose me out twelve of your barons and

Heroes and Order

Conclusion