
Heng makes some really interesting arguments. I particularly like the one about how the English are represented as the chosen people within the story. A lot of this reminds me of the roman a clef-like representation that Frances E.W. Harper does in her epic poem "Moses," where the chosen people are African Americans and the evil Egyptians are white people.
I love the idea of taking a piece of medieval text and discussing it in its cultural and historical context. This is what I've done a lot of the last few years, but usually I'm working with something more recent. But I'd like to read more about these ideas, especially since Heng makes some really interesting conclusions that sound perfect for more work to be done on them. The piece implies that other romances should be read with race and nationalistic movements in mind to further illuminate that romance and the culture that produced and consumed it. Going back to the Song of Roland, an epic poem, not a romance, as I did for an earlier post on medieval literature, I remember reading the descriptions of the Moors and thinking about what a race fail it was, since the Moors are every stereotype of Africans and Muslims: crazy, savage, ignorant, and polytheistic.
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