Les rêves de Charlemagne dans La Chanson de Roland : un fantasme d’honneur blessé qui programme le récit, mais auquel Olivier demeure étranger

Abstract

Abstract A structural study of the «Chanson» allows us to identify a system of values that Roland obeys: he acts according to two positive values, honour and death. And the narrative course of the hero is that if he’s deprived of the first, he must confront the second. An analysis of the text, read in intertextual relation with its historical environment, reveals the polysemy of the «honour». It is at the same time material reality of the fief received in reward for the service rendered, social fact of the esteem of the peers, religious enthusiasm in the defense of the faith, cultural event of the litterary work that sings the merits of the knight, physical, but also psychological, reality of corporal integrity. This allows a reflection of psychoanalitic inspiration to discover there some family implications and a fantasy hidden behind the dreams of Charlemagne, programming also the different stages of the story: the death of Roland is presented as a mutilation of the emperor, a negation of his honour, which forces him to face death in a fight against Baligant. But Olivier, stranger to the spirit of these dreams, is not able to stop the tragic mechanism they trigger.