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WINNER’S TRAUMA: EXPLORING THE CONSEQUENCES OF VICTORY IN

IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLES IN THE SPANISH RECONQUISTA AND THE

FIRST LEVANTINE CRUSADE

by

David M. Reher

A Thesis Submitted in

Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

Masters of Arts

In Foreign Language, Literature and Translation

At

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

May 2011

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ABSTRACT

WINNER’S TRAUMA: EXPLORING THE CONSEQUENCES OF VICTORY INIDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLES IN THE SPANISH RECONQUISTA AND THE

FIRST LEVANTINE CRUSADE

by

David M. Reher

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2011Under the Supervision of Michelle Bolduc and Nancy Bird-Soto

Combining aspects of literary trauma theory with the psychological symptoms of trauma, this paper endeavors to establish the existence of winner’s trauma. This concept refers to regret on the part of a victor after winning a conflict that has existed long enough to form a foundationalpart of the victor’s identity. Symptomatic of this is regret of the “other’s” destruction, attempts to reconcile the other with the self, and attempts to return to the trauma’s point of origin. Working within a medieval and early modern context, this paper explores works written in the context of the Spanish Reconquista, including the works Don Quijote, Lazarillo de Tormes, and Cantar del Mio Cid, and also in thecontext of the first Crusade to the Levant, primarily focusing on Gerusalemme Liberata. The paper concludes by exploring how the impulse to crusade and the impulse to colonize are manifestations of Europe’s own trauma as a former Roman colony.

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TABLE OF CONTENTSI.: Introduction:

1Thesis1Overview 2Methodology3

II. Theoretical criteria: 7

Psychological framework8On violent vs. nonviolent traumas

9Symptoms of non-violent trauma

10Individual vs. collective trauma

12Literary framework12

III. The Reconquista:15

Dynamics 16El Cantar del Mio Cid 17Lazarillo 19Don Quijote 26

IV. The First Crusade to the Holy Land:33

Dynamics 34Gerusalemme Liberata: Introduction35Gerusalemme Liberata: Analysis 38Rewriting the Slaughter of Jerusalem

40Sex and Violence44

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VI. Conclusion:49

Works Cited53

Appendix A54

Curriculum Vitae56

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© Copyright by David M. Reher, 2011

All Rights Reserved

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“We are only the agents of history inasmuch as we also suffer it. The victims of history and the innumerable masses who, still today, undergo history more than the make it are the witnesses par excellence to this major structure of our historical condition. And those who are—or who believe themselves to be—the most active agents of history suffer it no less than do its—or their—victims, even if this only be in terms of the unintended effects of their most calculated enterprises.”

--Paul Ricouer, “Time and Narrative”

Part I: Introduction

One basic tenet of classical physics is the

conservation of momentum. A ball coming into contact with

another, for instance, will always transfer some of its

momentum into the other ball. As commonplace as this may be

in the everyday, concrete world, this law seems to be

suspended when faced with abstract realities. There is an

impression that megalithic powers rise and cut their way

through history, subsuming lesser entities with little or no

effect on themselves. The crucial conflicts seem rather

unilateral: Rome defeats Carthage and secures its role as an

imperial power, while Carthage is plowed over with salt and

burned to the ground; Montresor buries Fortunato alive, thus

redressing his ‘thousand injuries;’ or, in Princess Bride,

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Inigo Montoya finally kills the six-fingered man and

launches, presumably, a successful career as the Dread

Pirate Roberts.

However, is it realistic to assume that conquering

entities are not affected, albeit not to the same degree as

those that they conquer? When a conflict has formed part of

one’s identity for so long, how can the end of that conflict

not have profound consequences that unsettle cultural

foundations? Do those who inflict trauma feel none on their

own? Is trauma just a one way street? How will individuals

reply to a collective, social trauma? I will attempt to

answer all of these questions in this essay.

Thesis

This project explores the concept and implications of

winner’s trauma in the Middle Ages. It is commonly taken

for that will granted that the losers of any given conflict

will suffer from emotional ramifications from the loss,

whether it is the consequent pillage and slaughter by the

victor, the subsuming of cultural identity as the defeated

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are enslaved or governed by the victor, the misery that

stems from having to reevaluate a collective identity that

now has a subservient role to dominators, and so forth.

However, what seems to receive very little attention is the

trauma that comes from winning a conflict.

Admittedly, this regret is usually experienced to a far

less significant degree, for various reasons. Often, the

need to consolidate the gains of the victory supersede the

ideological reevaluation of one’s identity. Also, there is

a period of latency that separates the traumatic event from

the traumatic reaction. Moreover, different social strata

will react to the change differently—those who are affected

by the trauma will not be able to easily redirect the enmity

that was once felt against one foe toward the next. The

traumatic effects are not always immediate either; elation

comes first before giving way to regret. Also, winner’s

trauma does not manifest itself in the same manner. Since

individuals have differing reactions to personal traumas, a

collective culture and its associated subsets cannot help

but to show diverse symptoms of trauma as its constituent

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parts cope in unique ways, perhaps through cynicism,

disillusionment, nostalgia for the conflict, even nihilistic

destruction.

This does not preclude the presence of trauma, even if

it is to a limited degree. I intend to establish this

presence by looking at how two different scenarios from the

Middle Ages were viewed through the lens of humanist Europe.

The two conflicts are: the Spanish Reconquista where I will

draw on El Cid, Lazarillo de Tormes and Don Quijote, and the First

Crusade to the Levant, where I will draw on Gerusalemme

Liberata. The retrospective writing that comes as a result

of these conflicts subtly offers a glimpse into the

conflicts’ accompanying socio-historical experiences that

reflect the winner’s trauma that will be my focus. El Cid,

which stands out as a contemporary rather than retrospective

text, will provide a basis for my explorations of winner’s

trauma in later, retrospective texts reacting to the

Reconquista.

Overview

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Before continuing, establishing the bases for my paper

will prove useful to the reader. In methodology, I justify

my focus on the texts centered on the Middle Ages for

exploring winner’s trauma and also cite potential sources

for my approach. Next, I will define the term trauma,

drawing in part on literary trauma theory (in particular,

Cathy Caruth’s interpretation of Freudian trauma) and also

its psychological pathology (as established in the Diagnostic

and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder IV (2000)). Drawing on these

two sources, I will establish various touchstones for

revealing trauma in writing.

I will then explore the Reconquista, explaining its

centrality in Iberian auto-perception, and then looking at

its legacy for signs of trauma as previously defined.

Drawing on works like El Cid (c. 1200), Lazarillo del Tormes (1554),

and Don Quijote (Part I, 1605 and Part II, 1615), I will focus

on elements of marginality, guilt, and brutality. After

this, I will move to the first Levantine Crusade, using

Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (1581) as a primary text.

I explore how Tasso rewrites the historical Crusade to

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critique traumatic aspects of the holy warrior’s vocation,

the slaughter of Jerusalem, and the villainization of the

‘other’.

Finally, I will explore the implications of winner’s

trauma as a corresponding parallel to post-colonial theory,

and also as symptomatic of a post-colonial trauma that was

present in early modern Europe. By locating the root of

European colonialism in the Middle Ages, I hope to establish

that the Middle Ages are still relevant to understanding the

modern era.

Methodology

As implied, my approach is limited to a focus of how

Medieval Europe was viewed retrospectively, as I draw on

sources from the Renaissance era that provide a glance back

at the work across decades or centuries. A reasonable

question to pose at this point is, What did Middle Ages mean

to the Renaissance? Simply put, in contrast to the

nationalism and Occidentalism that was fairly solidified in

the Renaissance, the process of forming identity in the

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medieval era was a persistent, central struggle that would

contrast with later eras, and make it ideal for observing

winner’s trauma at work when a period of latency had passed.

Few other eras would offer as many identities that are

almost purely founded on ideological conflict. This dynamic

seems unique to the Middle Ages, which include many strong,

fanatical identities along with a sense of a vacuum of

identity, with little lying between the two extremes. In

contrast, identities in other eras would possess (and

tolerate) greater social, cultural and ideological diversity

that could offer alternative sources of identity if one’s

primary identity were called into question or destroyed.

Logical counters to this assertion of uniqueness are

the fascist powers which emerged during the early 20th

century. Both Italy and Germany, after all, espoused

collective identities that bordered on the fanatical.

However, these ideas were shattered as both countries were

defeated, yet both remained unified as states (though this

proved temporary in Germany’s case). Their collective

identity was not based on a fleeting cause of conflict.

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This indicates that, in both cases, there was cultural

stability owing to a quasi-unified identity from a shared

political history and heritage that had already

crystallized. Given the parallel developments of Italy and

Germany (which both emerged as unified states less than a

century before becoming fascist powers), one reading of the

extreme nationalism could be a sort of pendulum effect

resulting from a need to create a centralized political

identity (noting that a roughly unified linguistic,

historical, and cultural identity had already been in place

before) from what were historically several smaller

kingdoms.

The persistence of these defeated countries and of

their collective identities is a marked contrast to former

kingdoms from the Middle Ages which seem to have all but

disappeared when conquered; as an example, we speak of

Castile, where, after given points in history, Santander and

Cordova are seldom mentioned. This example helps to

demonstrate that the conflicts of the Middle Ages were of

higher stakes than parallel instances in the recent modern

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era; looking at the driving forces of the Middle Ages will

further solidify this conclusion.

In much of the Medieval Era, the literate classes lived

perpetually in the cultural and political shadow of the

Greco-Roman identity, studying its literature, communicating

in Latin, and continuing to support the hierarchy and

structure of the Catholic Church, which had been based on

the Roman Empire. The altered importance of the title “Holy

Roman Empire” carried the implicit calling to reconsolidate

the Roman colonies; this would have inherently entailed the

creation of an identity that would subjugate or eliminate

all others.

The presence of Rome in the collective consciousness of

the West European educated class acted as an impetus to

consolidate identity in Medieval Europe in order to restore

the glory of Rome. Given the milieu and instability of the

time, conflict was the principal and perhaps easiest way to

do this. Conflicts often forced a change in the balance of

power and primacy between dueling identities. Thus, while

the violence of the Middle Ages was undoubtedly perpetuated

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by a physical need for survival, it was also motivated by a

psychological need to fill the vacuum for a fixed identity

that had been fading slowly since the collapse of the Roman

Empire.

It is valid, too, to say that many of the conflicts

were in essence ideological—the Crusades were, as was the

ongoing feud between the Guelph and Ghibellines1 in Dante’s

Florence. Even those that were less so, such as the Norman

invasion of England or the Hundred Years War2 would still

indirectly shape the notion of cultural identity and what it

meant to belong to a specific state, as in the case of the

French and English in the aforementioned conflicts.

The notion of identity was volatile and in the state of

formation, yet simultaneously essential at a fundamental

level. By necessity, powerful collective entities formed in

relatively brief periods of time, often as a result of a

conflict. The Crusades are a fine example of this. Diverse

1 Which initially began as a conflict between two families and over the course of years, developed and ideological component for those in support of or opposed to the papacy2 A series of conflicts lasting from 1337-1453 between the French house of Valois and the English House of Plantagenet over the succession of the French throne which formed the context for Joan of Arc

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political and cultural identities united and cooperated with

the express purpose of defeating Muslims. In the case of

Spain, Iberian identity seems to have consolidated in a

similar sense, only across a period of several centuries.

To conclude this section, I wish to clarify that my

intention for this paper is not to describe with all surety

the complete state of the victorious cultural collectives.

This would be impossible due to a dearth of knowledge about

what the unlettered classes may have thought. Moreover, the

emotions of those who wrote are not necessarily

representative of those of others. It is hardly necessary

to say that artists often tend to a more critical,

reflective (and at times more perceptive) view of society

which may lead to emotional extremes that are unique to

them.

Part II: Theoretical criteria.

Winner’s trauma seems to be largely unexplored;

additionally, there seems to be little work done on

exploring trauma in the medieval era. Seminal works such as

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Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History

(1996) and Dominick Lacapra’s Representing the Holocaust: History,

Theory, Trauma (1996) have cited examples from WWII, while

other works, such as Laura’s Di Prete’s "Foreign Bodies": Trauma,

Corporeality, and Textuality in Contemporary American Culture (2005) has

extended the conversation to racism and incest in the US.

Tellingly (and, really, quite logically), these all focus on

the victim’s trauma. These texts tend to be of a

psychoanalytical vein, with a rather minimal inclusion of

psychological interpretations of trauma.

What is winner’s trauma?

Before delineating my approach, a definition is in

order. By winner’s trauma, I mean, essentially, a sense of

trauma that is inverted—where the traumatized individual is

not the victim of traumatic stimuli, but, rather, its agent.

This comes dangerously close to guilt and remorse.

Undoubtedly, just as they may with typical trauma, both play

a part in winner’s trauma. Moreover, either can be a cause

of trauma. However, winner’s trauma is more profound than

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either, and also longer-lasting. Whereas guilt and remorse

refer to a persistent regret, trauma manifests itself in a

psychological or physical disorder stemming from the “wound”

that its etymology implies. As Freud says, “Remorse is a

general term for the ego’s reaction in a case of sense of

guilt. It contains, in little altered form, the sensory

material of the anxiety which is operating behind the sense

of guilt. . .” (Civilization 84). Trauma, in contrast, seems to

be defined more by its symptoms:

We give the name of traumas to those impressions, experienced early and later forgotten, to which we attach such great importance in the [etiology] of neuroses. . . We must often resign ourselves to saying that all we have before us is an unusual, abnormal reaction to experiences and demands which affect everyone, but are worked over and dealt with by other people in another manner which may be called normal. (Standard Edition 72-73)

Yet perhaps the strongest distinction between the two is the

symptoms that tend to follow trauma do not necessarily

follow simple remorse. The mental chaos of Don Quijote, the

detached ennui of Lazarillo, the fixation with death that

pervades Gerusalemme Liberata—all point to a deeper, more

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pervasive cause that is not just defined by simply remorse;

or, if it is, only by a traumatic remorse.

Theoretical approach

Given the unique nature of this particular project, it

is convenient to formulate a criterion for trauma. There

are two separate (though complementary) perspectives of

trauma that I wish to employ, the psychological and the

literary. The psychological benchmarks will be valuable in

establishing a set of symptoms. Indeed, in contrast to

literary theory, it is able to do so in a relatively

concrete manner. However, inasmuch as the psychological

approach is tailored to work with individuals (rather than

the collectives that are entailed in my project), I will

also draw from trauma literary theory. Given the medieval

predominance of literature and somewhat questionable

scientific rigor behind its contemporary accounts and

documentation, the literary theory will again prove

valuable, since it is designed specifically to decode texts.

Finally, literary theory provides a sense of the mechanism

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of trauma and offers specific examples of how it manifests

itself in the cultural collective.

This dual approach will be invaluable to exploring the

inscape of the individual literary works with which I hope

to come to some conclusions about the collective in which

they fit. I begin by laying out the psychological portion

of my approach, and then move onto the literary theory.

Psychological framework

The DSMV-IV, the standard handbook for diagnosing

psychosis, does not address trauma directly in and of

itself. However, its section on Post-traumatic Stress

Disorder is helpful in establishing a basic pathology of

trauma; naturally, though, this will be limited as it

describes symptoms of trauma (rather than trauma itself) and

also focuses specifically on traumas involving physical

violence, such as “military combat, violent personal assault

. . . being kidnapped, being taken hostage, terrorist

attack, torture, incarceration as a prisoner of war or in a

concentration camp, natural or manmade disasters, severe

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automobile accidents, or being diagnosed with a life-

threatening illness” (424). Also, because psychological

trauma tends to be associated more strongly with the

individual and less with collectivities, the implications of

this distinction should also be laid out. To begin, the

distinction between violent and non-violent traumas must be

explored.

On violent vs. nonviolent traumas

It is wise to make here a clearer distinction between

violent and non-violent trauma. Admittedly, owing to the

violent nature of the conflicts that I wish to analyze, PTSD

and violent trauma both factor strongly into the reality of

the Middle Ages and also into the emotional complexes of

winning sides in relation to these conflicts. However, the

trauma that I wish to address centers on the unsettling of

notions of identity—violence is only on the periphery of

this. In contrast to what I am seeking, the DSM-IV defines

the trauma leading to PTSD as “an event or events that

involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a

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threat to the physical integrity of self or others” or as

“the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness,

or horror” (427). The trauma resulting from a destabilized

identity is of a far more abstract and less severe nature,

more obvious and effective at the level of society as a

whole than in the individual per se.

There are, then, some fundamental differences between

violent and non-violent traumas. The irreducible simplicity

of violent trauma negates what reactions may be expected in

traumas of identity. For instance, PTSD encourages the

avoidance of stimuli that remind a traumatized person of the

event. This seems natural, but it does not transfer well to

the trauma of identity for a number of reasons. First, the

trauma of identity does not manifest itself as clearly in

one’s mental landscape as violent trauma does. In the case

of winner’s trauma, this process is confused by the

initially positive feelings that come with the victory.

Second, since it is collective trauma that comes from a

cultural and social event, the individual may have feelings

of self-doubt: everyone else seems overjoyed by the victory,

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which forces the traumatized to question the validity of

their feelings. If a sense of unease is indeed trauma,

attempts to deny or repress it will fail, forcing the

traumatized instead to try to seek out confirmation of their

feelings. Third, winner’s trauma does not emerge from a

single quantifiable event—it reflects, instead, a general

shift of overlying cultural principles. While violent

trauma from a car accident would lead to a logical avoidance

of driving and perhaps of cars in general, the source of

winner’s trauma cannot be reduced so easily into a physical

representative. In a sense, its abstract and nebulous

nature makes it a ubiquitous rather than local change,

though certainly violent trauma also carries far-reaching

consequences. Fourth, violent trauma is likely to stem from

the physical “fight or flight” reaction, which entails a

whole realm of physiological reactions to imminent danger.

These reinforce the psychic trauma in way that is a marked

contrast with non-violent traumas, especially in the case of

winner’s trauma, which is far more passive and does not

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originate with a threat to survival, at least in the most

fundamental sense.

Symptoms of non-violent trauma

There are, however, symptoms that overlap between both

violent and non-violent traumas. For instance, some

symptoms lend themselves well to what can be conjectured as

the backdrop against which victory is imposed. For

instance, the defeat of a worthy or respected foe would lead

to feelings of survival guilt, as the victor considers

his/her own near fatality and laments the loss of an equal:

“Individuals with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder may describe

painful guilty feelings about surviving when others did not

survive or about things they had to do to survive” (DSM-IV

425). This was the case in the Reconquista, where the

Muslims were the continued foe of the Christians for several

centuries; El Cid often portrays the Moors with a sense of

respect, as does La Chanson de Roland (C. 1140-1170); La Araucana

provides a colonial version in which Amerindian warriors are

lauded. Tasso’s narrative of the first Crusade to the

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Levant also prominently features the same pro-Muslim dynamic

in the Reconquista.

The DSM-IV provides a list of potential symptoms (for a

complete list, please see appendix A) that are particularly

appropriate for the unsettling of identity that is entailed

in winner’s trauma. These will be present in the literary

works I explore, and include: “self-destructive and

impulsive behavior; dissociative symptoms; . . . feelings of

ineffectiveness, shame, despair, or hopelessness; feeling

permanently damaged; a loss of previously sustained beliefs;

hostility; social withdrawal; feeling constantly threatened;

impaired relationships with others; or a change from the

individual’s previous personality characteristics” (DSM-IV

425). Please consult Appendix A for a complete list.

Beyond this, though, as will be further elaborated upon

in the exploration of the literary understanding of trauma,

trauma permeates through the subconscious into the act of

creation itself:

In younger children, distressing dreams of the event may, within several weeks, change into generalized nightmares of monsters, of rescuing others, or of

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threats to self or others. Young children usually do not have the sense that they are reliving the past; rather, the reliving of the trauma may occur through repetitive play (426).

This notion of repetition closely relates to the

concept of nostalgia, which will prove central to the

winner’s trauma, and also is a point of juncture between the

psychological and literary views of trauma. Traumatic

events that are artistically transformed into something

symbolic are in a way involved in the process of play and

creation. Artistic expression is thus an instinctive

reaction for the traumatized.

Individual vs. collective trauma

As mentioned, the framework set forth in the DSM-IV is

focused on the individual, whereas my approach focuses on

collective traumas. Peter Suedfeld, in his article

“Reactions to Societal Trauma: Distress and/or Eustress,”

(1997) makes several useful contributions in this vein. His

view of trauma forms a macroperspective that facilitates

viewing trauma as something less about physical violence,

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and more about “an experience that invalidates one’s normal

assumptions of order, predictability, safety, and identity,

a very severe environmental challenge calling for the utmost

energization of coping resources” (850). This easily lends

itself to the cultural and social shocks (such as winner’s

trauma ) that are felt at varying levels by individuals, but

which also still manifest themselves at the collective

levels. Suedfeld additionally talks about how “planful

problem-solving” can moderate the negative effects of an

event on the collective. This is valuable in explaining why

winner’s trauma is somewhat of a fringe occurrence—not only

were there plans in place after the victory, but the victory

in and of itself was planned. After the Reconquista, Spain

directed its efforts to the New World as well as toward

establishing religious orthodoxy and ethnic purity in the

Old World, and the first Crusaders in the Levant were

immediately occupied with the task of ruling their new

acquisitions.

Literary framework

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In her book Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History,

one of the most important works to explore trauma, Cathy

Caruth explores manifestations of tragedy. Through an

exploration of literary and psychological works as diverse

as the movie Hiroshima Mon Amour, Freud’s Moses and Monotheism,

and his Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Caruth defines trauma “as

the response to an unexpected or overwhelming violent event

or events that are not fully grasped as they occur, but

return later in repeated flash-backs, nightmares, and other

repetitive phenomena” (91). Citing Freud, she explains this

continual repetition as an attempt to capture the moment of

the traumatic event.

The traumatic event, which Caruth defines in part as

being unanticipated, represents a moment of rupture in

perception where something important and life-changing

occurred; the mind wasn’t prepared for it, and thus

persistently tries to locate the event and master it through

recurrent dreams and other repetitions. Another form of

this mastery is in play, where the traumatic event is re-

enacted to provide the illusion of control. Behind the

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trauma is the departure, which refers to the changes that

occur as a result of the traumatic event. When the

departure takes the form of death (either the death of an

intimate, or a threat to one’s own life), the traumatic

repetition becomes an attempt to comprehend the

incomprehensible concept of one’s own death. Moreover,

there is an additional act of departure from the traumatic

event. The symptoms of traumatic events never manifest

themselves immediately; rather, there is a period of latency

between the event and its repercussions during which the

departure is felt and internalized.

Intriguingly, Caruth explores how Freud links trauma to

literature and history, both of which are especially

relevant to the primary sources I will later be exploring:

“If Freud turns to literature to describe traumatic

experience, it is because literature, like psychoanalysis,

is interested in the complex relation between knowing and

not knowing” (3). Echoing this, “To read the text not only

in terms of its formal qualities but also in terms of

psychic correspondences is to say something about the way

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plot dynamics reflect human dynamics and the way people use

stories to channel and express the energy of the psyche”

(Friedman 7). Nigel C. Hunt goes a step further, tying

literature into psychology: “Psychologist have traditionally

ignored literature as a potential source of data. Analysis

of literary sources can potentially provide psychologists

with rich data from which to develop and text psychological

theories” (161). I add that the notions of play and

repetition at times manifest themselves in the production of

literature and history, both of which are often attempts to

access the inaccessible and express what has escaped us.

History, especially, shows a connection to trauma in

this sense: “Through the notion of trauma, . . . we can

understand that a rethinking of reference is aimed not at

eliminating history but at resituating it in our

understanding, that is, at precisely permitting history to

arise where immediate understanding may not” (Caruth11).

Both history and trauma are repetitions created with the

unconscious intent of reaching an unreachable origin, which,

in the cases of both history and trauma, is an event that

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proved significant, but that was unanticipated. They are

attempts to give meaning to the consequences of something

that, at the time, seemed inconsequential, or at least was

not properly anticipated and vested with importance. This

desire to recapture the past ties readily into the idea of

nostalgia, which is also an attempt to return to the origin

and capture an aspect of the past.

As mentioned earlier, the limitations of the literary

notion of trauma is its lack of definition. According to

the literary perspective, there are myriad sources of

trauma, and “One person’s mouse may be another person’s

dragon. In one case, the trauma may have been an actual

event. In another case, it may have been a fantasy” (Arlow

121). Life in and of itself can be traumatic, regardless of

the specific factors therein—hence the need for a clear

network of symptoms upon which to rely. At the same time,

though, the concrete criteria provided by the psychological

approach is not enough. The literary and historical

perspective of trauma is indispensable to exploring winner’s

trauma because winner’s trauma was encrypted and preserved

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in literature. As mentioned, due to the conforming

pressures of the era, expressing regret or nostalgia toward

the other side was likely dangerous; additionally, again due

to the nature of the era, the written literature and history

are the only materials that can provide the necessary

psychological depth for this analysis. Having thus combined

the two notions of trauma into a workable system, I will

begin with an exploration of the trauma of the Reconquista.

Part III: The Reconquista

In the year 711, an army of 7,000 Arabs and Berbers

sailed across the strait of Gibraltar, beginning the Muslim

conquest of Spain, invited by rivals to the Visigothic King

Roderic. Roderic’s forces were unable to turn away the

invaders, and Toledo fell a few months later, as the Muslim

army continued to sweep eastward into France, holding on to

Poitiers for a time before being turned back by Charles

Martel. The Visigoths established the kingdom of Asturias

in the Northern reaches of Spain, protected by the

mountains. The intermittent eight centuries would see the

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Christians slowly trying to regain their territory in a

period known as the Reconquista. In the south, deposed

Umayyad prince Abd-al-Rahman would set his capitol in

Cordova, stabilizing Muslim Spain and creating one of the

greatest cultural centers of the era. María Rosa Menocal

describes the convivencia that emerged: “This was the chapter

of Europe’s culture when Jews Christians, and Muslims lived

side by side and, despite their intractable differences and

enduring hostilities, nourished a complex culture of

tolerance. . .” (11).

The Umayyad dynasty ruled until 1031 when Muslim Spain

would begin to fragment into smaller kingdoms. In 1086,

these kingdoms sought the help of the Almoravid kingdom in

Morocco, leading to a brief resurgence in Muslim power that

prevented the Christians from moving forward, though few

Christian kingdoms fell during their rein. Muslim rule in

Al-Andalus would last until the fall of Granada in 1492.

Shortly thereafter, the Catholic monarchy expelled the

Muslims and Jews from Spain.

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Dynamics

More powerfully than in any other conflict, the

Reconquista plays a huge role in the development of the idea

of Spain, informing policies that it would carry into the

New World, and establishing a literary legacy that permeated

the greatest works of the time. The encounter with the New

World likely did much to enable Spain to transition from the

notion of reconquering to one of conquering. This

transition allowed it to avoid the severe consequences that

would have come about if the war efforts had come to a

grinding halt without an ideology to take their place.

However, this perhaps would have done little for the solider

left at home, who had plenty reason to be disillusioned.

The Muslims, a respected foe, had been conquered, leaving a

vacuum that was aggravated by the presence of chivalric

literature still set in the Reconquista. Moreover, the Jews

and Moriscos who had opted to live under Christian rule were

removed in an act that must have seemed unfair. In spite of

regaining Spain, wars against the Turks continued in the

west. On the whole, there was little left for a person

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still caught up in the influence of the past; it would be

only natural to miss it, and perhaps even feel some regret

for having played a part in its end.

El Cantar del Mio Cid

This regret, though, seems to manifest itself early on

in the Reconquista. This is reflected in El Cantar del Mio Cid,

which shows a strong sympathy toward “otherness” as well as

the cultural others of pre-1492 Spain. This sympathy is the

source of the winner’s trauma that will manifest itself

later on; already, there is a paradoxical relationship. It

is important to note that this work does not exemplify

winner’s trauma specifically. It is prior to the traumatic

event of victory in 1492, and otherwise too close to the

Middle Ages for the required period of latency to have

passed and to provide a retrospective of the medieval era.

However, it does show the roots of the exploration of the

other that is key to establishing the foundations of

winner’s trauma. The characters in the narrative all draw

their identity (whether it is their national and religious

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sense of belonging, their prowess in battle, their

demonstration of chivalry in conflicts, their political

unity against a foe, etc.) from an opponent that they are at

the same time working to destroy. I will explore this

interplay of marginality and dependence by focusing on the

subversion of notions of center and periphery in the main

characters in the narratives and in the blurring of lines

between Christians and Muslims.

In a trend that will continue in the other works

analyzed in this section, the protagonist Ruy Díaz Vivar—El

Cid—is wrongfully banished by his king, such that, “que a

Mio Cid Rruy Díaz que madi nol’ diessen posada / e aquel que

ge la diesse sopiesse vera palabra / que perderié los averes

e más los ojos de la cara / e aun demás los cuerpos e las

almas” (24). From there, he must earn back Alfonso’s favor,

which he does through combat with the Moors in Zaragoza. El

Cid is now an outcast among his own people, and an outsider

among the Moors. This double-marginality is important. In

contrast to other works such as the epics of King Arthur or

the Song of Roland in which the kings are portrayed as

Reher 39

unquestionable authorities, the reader cannot help but doubt

King Alfonso and sympathize with El Cid, even though he is

perceived as a traitor. His centrality as a protagonist

nullifies his marginality as an exile, and the reader is

obligated to question the socio-cultural system that treated

him unjustly. It is only from the periphery that this

system can truly be re-evaluated. This cannot happen

without lowering our estimation of King Alfonso, and this

lowering of the authoritative center concatenates with the

shift of empathy and centrality between the centralized

Christians and the marginalized characters (namely the

Moors) that Ruy Díaz encounters.

This power shift chiefly takes places in comparisons

that unsettle the monolithic authority of the Christians by

allowing the Muslims to share it. On one hand, El Cid

treats the Muslims humanely, allowing them to continue

living in lands he has conquered without obligation to

switch faiths (a decision that must have proven accusatory

when the Moors were later expelled from Spain 1492 or forced

to publicly convert). He accepts a gift of a “piel vermeja,

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morisca e ondrada” (30) in a gesture that reflects the

estimation of the opposition’s craftwork. After his first

victory in Castejón, he sells his share of the booty back to

the Moors, and releases the captives (he repeats this

gesture in book 40). As he leaves, “los moros e las moras

bendiziéndol’ están” (50), reflecting that his humanitarian

actions are received with great approbation. Finally, he

also acts to defend the lives of the captive Moors: “Que los

descabecemos nada non ganaremos / cojámoslos de dentro ca el

señorío tenemos” (54). Moreover, El Cid has Muslim allies,

asking that his companions “[vayan] a Molina que yaze más

adelant, / tiénela Avengalvón, mio amigo es de paz, / con

tors ciento cavalleros bien vos consigrá” (98).

El Cid’s treatment of the Moors—his demarginalization

of the other—is accentuated by the moral failings of the

Christians around him. This is not to say that the author,

by any means, is marginalizing Christianity itself. He

succinctly affirms the superiority of his faith: “Los moros

llaman Mafómat e los cristionas Sancti Yague; / cayén en un

poco de logar moros muertos mill e trezientos ya” (60).

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Notwithstanding, Count Ramon seems to have no scruples about

drawing up an army that includes Muslims to attack Ruy Díaz.

Additionally, El Cid’s daughters are beaten and abandoned by

their two Christian husbands, who elsewhere plot to kill one

of El Cid’s Moorish allies. Ansur González, who takes the

side of the husbands, is accused of being a traitor, and

wicked: “Antes almuerzas que vayas a oración / a os que das

paz fártasloas aderredor. / non dizes verdad a amigo ni

señor, falso a todos e más al criador” (196). Finally, of

course, there is the injustice visited upon El Cid, which is

either caused by the King himself or some malingerer. In

any case, the author shows moral approval and disapproval

almost regardless of faith, being harsher, if anything, to

bad Christians. The basis for winner’s trauma that El Cid

establishes with a multifaceted view of the other (that

includes a fundamental respect and need for it, and also is

accompanied by a determination to destroy it) serves as the

impetus that will drive the two remaining works I will

explore.

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Lazarillo

We have yet another marginalized character in the

protagonist of Lazarillo de Tormes. This work was published in

1554, a half century after the conclusion of the Reconquista,

when the winner’s trauma begins to emerge. I intend to

explore the winner’s trauma as a progression that parallels

the development of the character Lazarillo with the gradual

disillusionment of the Spanish state. I will explore the

allegorical value of Lazarillo’s two fathers and the

numbness created by the brutal nature of Lazarillo’s world,

and how it manifests itself within the protagonist.

The opening chapter offers itself as an allegory that

reflects the trauma from the Reconquista. Lazarillo

ultimately loses his biological father to the war, where,

“con su señor, como leal criado, feneció su vida” (25). His

adopted father, a Moor, is also accused of robbery. “Y

probósele cuanto digo, y aun más. Porque a mí con amenazas

me preguntaban, y como niño respondía, y descubría cuanto

sabía con miedo. . . Al triste de mi padrastro azotaron y

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pringaron, y a mi madre, pusieron pena por justicia. . . ”

(27). Both scenarios echo key strands of the Reconquista.

The Christian father is killed in combat (significantly

against Muslim Turks) after being exiled for thievery, which

echoes the defeat of the Visigoths where their territory was

reduced to a small domain in the mountains. Lazarillo

inherits this legacy from his father. He spends the

remainder of the account wandering, an exile in his own

land, stealing and being stolen from. It is reminiscent of

the legacy of the Reconquista that was similarly passed down

from generation to generation, undoubtedly also laden with

notions of exile. The Visigoths of Austrias first abandoned

their own land in 711, and then, upon retaking lands that

been unfamiliar for generations, must have again felt like

exiles. That his father’s death takes place while in combat

against Muslims further confirms the connection; perhaps too

it is not coincidental that both spurious sequels (El Lazarillo

de Amberes and the version by Juan de Luna) begins by sending

Lazarillo to fight the Turks, following his father’s legacy.

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The Muslim father is betrayed by the son. It is

important that Lazarillo’s culpability originates in fear.

At first, young Lazarillo is afraid of his new father; after

coming to trust him, though, it is fear that induces him to

testify against him. Fear is a natural and often initial

reaction in encounters with the other, and undoubtedly

played a continual part in the Reconquista. The betrayal of

the second father corresponds to the expulsion of the Moors

from Iberia, an act which could have the value of treachery

in light of the tolerance that Christianity enjoyed in

Muslim lands. Alternatively, from a more Freudian view

(enhanced by the mother’s promiscuous nature and later works

as a prostitute), the child may have felt challenged when

forced to share his mother’s love, first with a stepfather,

and then with a half-brother. We find that Lazarillo’s

initial feelings toward his stepfather is "pesábame con él”

(26). While he anticipated once again having his mother all

to himself when testifying against his stepfather, he is

forced instead to confront increased difficulties brought

about by the death of the breadwinner. In either case,

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guilt emerges from causing a death, and ties into the guilt

of surviving. The demise of a family member forces one to

question the validity of his/her own notions of importance

and survival. Like the curse of exile, a curse of betrayal

will follow Lazarillo as he is continually punished by the

treachery of his various masters who decieve and deprive

him.

The two fathers are linked not only as fathers, but

also by the stigma of theft and their death. Accordingly,

both are responsible for imparting heritage to Lazarillo.

This blending is, on one hand, a valuing of the marginalized

Moor as he is conflated with the accepted Spaniard. On the

other hand, the disproportionate punishment is glaring. For

the same crime, the biological father is exiled while the

step-father is whipped and basted with boiling lard. This

discrepancy is further accentuated by the fact that, in some

senses, the stepfather is a more supportive paternal figure

that adopts Lazarillo and provides for him in a way his

father failed to do. The juxtaposition of the two figures

thus serves as a covert commentary on the inherent lack of

Reher 46

justice, where the better father is brutalized. This

further aligns itself with the notion of treachery.

Lazarillo’s father joins a war against the Muslim other, yet

at the same time, his son’s care is entrusted to him; the

other is similarly betrayed by the son, highlighting the

injustice of the very society that the marginalized

stepfather is helping to propagate by taking part in step-

fatherhood. This analysis describes the origin of

Lazarillo’s trauma, which I will discuss next, while also

expressing the trauma of the author who was on the winning

side. The pairing of the two fathers is a repetition of the

cultural winner’s trauma originating in the exile and death

of the other.

I wish, also, to cover the rather vicious nature of the

comical aspects, which we will see repeated in Don Quijote.

The humor is quite brutal. During his time with the blind

beggar, Lazarillo has a jar smashed on his face while trying

to steal wine: “Fue tal el golpecillo que me desatinó y sacó

de sentido, y el jarrazo tan grande que los pedazos dél se

me métieron por la cara, rompiéndomela por muchas partes, y

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me quebró dientes sin los cuales hasta hoy día me quedé”

(32). Lazarillo gets revenge by tricking his master into

jumping into a post head first, “da con la cabeza el poste,

que sonó tan recio como si diera con una gran calabaza, y

cayó luego para atrás medio muerto y hendida la cabeza”

(39). Later, after being caught for stealing he is beaten so

badly that he loses consciousness for three days. In

addition to this and his constant starvation, he is

perpetually the victim, accomplice or witness to dishonest

schemes in a vicious world divided between poverty and

amoral greed. These factors all serve as glaring reminders

of the cruelty in Lazarillo’s reality as well as a general

social commentary on the clerical abuse, racism and greed of

contemporary Spain. As Lazarillo’s trauma is fueled even

further, the narrative drives the reader to scrutinize

introspectively the system to which they exist and the role

they play in it. This naturally also includes examining the

system’s roots in the Reconquista.

The physical violence and scarring ultimately emphasize

the dimension of corporeality in the novel. In her book

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"Foreign Bodies" Trauma Corporeality, and Textuality in Contemporary American

Culture, Laure Di Prete explores the multiple valences that

this carries in the discussion of trauma. Among these, she

points out how the body can be a symbol for trauma, as

something that “spatializes. . . dramatic losses by

choosing a mode of witnessing that is profoundly physical”

(2). Lazarillo’s external scars act as manifestations of

the culture-wide trauma that has wounded him internally.

This violence drives a wedge between his body and his self

(representing the division between his traitorous culture

and himself), as the pain and scarring symbolize treachery:

“by turning the body—that exposed part that betray sour

vulnerability and defenselessness—into the very force that

undermines and undoes us” (17). Unable to function thus

divided, he attempts to regain his body by obsessing over

hunger.

The savage nature of the environment and characters

that surround Lazarillo is only rivaled by his own fixation

with food, which symbolically extends to represent the

essentials for survival. As I mention in a previous paper,

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Lazarillo is, justifiably, obsessed with it. While working

for a cleric, he says, “Jamás fui enemigo de la naturaleza

humana sino entonces. Y esto era porque comíamos bien y me

hartaban. Deseaba y aun rogaba a Dios que cada día matase

el suyo” (“Lazarillo” 43). Later, when he (consciously or

not) accepts his role as a cuckold, he says, “tengo mi señor

Arcipreste todo favor y ayuda. Y siempre en el año le da en

veces al pie de una carga de trigo, por las pascuas su

carne. . .” (“Lazarillo” 85), justifying the fact that the

Archpriest is taking advantage of him by citing how well he

eats. He measures the success of his life by his access to

food, and shuns concepts of honor, fidelity, or dignity in

its pursuit.

This fixation with food is the manifestation of

Lazarillo’s trauma. In a sense, he seems to be drifting

through life in a numbed depression, which calls to mind a

portion of the DSM-IV, which includes the following in its

diagnostic criteria of PTSD:

Numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by three (or more) of the following: . . . markedly diminished interest or

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participation in significant activities; feeling of detachment or estrangement from others; restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings);sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span). (427)

It seems that Lazarillo’s obsession with food trumps all

other aspects his life. He has little ambition, looking

instead for the easiest path. He saves up enough money to

buy a sword and respectable clothes, but this only motivates

him to quit his job as a water carrier. He turns down work

as a constable on account of the risk. Once he secures his

job as a town crier, he does not look to progress any

further.

He forms no significant relationships, but rather shows

a marked detachment as he moves from person to person. Even

in his marriage, he is less concerned with connection, and

more focused on meeting his physical necessities. He

expresses no remorse for leaving even his own mother. His

relationships often seem to come down to the continual quest

for a master that will feed him.

While Lazarillo does not seem to have an imminent

feeling of demise as the DSM-IV would require, neither does

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he have a strong sense of future. He has no plans or

ambitions. He is content and even adamant, about

maintaining his current situation; although he is married,

he accepts that it will be an infertile marriage, and that

he will not have children to carry on his name. Nor does he

want any legacy further than advertising the daily prices

and varieties of wines. His daily speech does not have a

lasting effect, but instead it only lasts for a day before

he must renew his speech to announce the prices of the

subsequent day. His speech is confined to just the present,

and has no impact into the future. It is not creative or

original, but merely a duplication of the speech of the true

producers.

Lazarillo’s trauma emerges in part from the

disillusionment that the conclusion of the Reconquista has

not changed or improved his life—rather, the tensions

resulting from the expulsion of the Muslims and the

continued war against the Turks has only made it more

difficult and complex. This is echoed in the fact that

Lazarillo, in spite of being the constant victim, is also

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surrounded by cultural winners, that is, people who have

managed to exploit the system to their advantage owing to

their positions in the institutions that featured

prominently into the Reconquista, like the church and

nobility. His problems, it seem, come from the greed of

these institutions. It also parallels it; he focuses on

staying well fed rather than picking up a useful trade from

his masters, in the same way that his religious masters,

rather than focusing on the spiritual importance of their

services, instead focus on material gain. Here, it can be

argued that their cynicism comes from a lack of conviction

of the importance of their work, as well as an over-mastery

of the system. They do their jobs well—too well, perhaps,

since they are able to become wealthy off of them, in

violation of their natural statuses. While his masters,

mostly, earn enough to support with him comfortably, none

do, even though they hire him with that promise. Also, this

emphasizes how winner’s trauma is not necessarily felt by

every individual within the collective. After all, the

Reconquista was not a victory for the common man.

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Instead, it is a hollow triumph, just as Lazarillo’s

ultimate haven of stability is also hollow. While he has

finally secured his essential survival needs, the reader is

forced to asked, To what end? There is no exit to his

ennui, and we leave him merely at the high point of a cycle

that has persisted throughout the book, and will likely

continue on after the narrative’s end. He is unable to

escape the legacy of betrayal and exile, nor can he erase

the scars on his body.

Don Quijote

To a greater extent than Lazarillo de Tormes, Don Quijote

centers on the trauma of the Reconquista. While it is

clearly an aspect in the former work, it is entirely central

to the latter. Here, I intend to explore the theme of

repetition as an attempt to regain the past; to support

this, I will begin by exploring the mindset of the

protagonist at the opening of the book as a manifestation of

the symptoms of PTSD. In addition, I will revisit the theme

of marginality that I touched on briefly in a previous

Reher 54

section, and also explore the value of nostalgia and address

how marginalized characters are given a voice.

According to the DSM-IV, one symptom of PTSD includes:

“Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma) as indicated by two (or more) of the following:

(1) difficulty falling or staying asleep(2) irritability or outbursts of anger(3) difficulty concentrating(4) hypervigilance(5) exaggerated startle response”

Arousal, of course, refers to a state of being awake and

psychological readiness. The first manifestation of trauma

pertains to an inability to sleep, calling to mind the

following: “En su resolución, él se enfrascó tanto en su

letura que se le pasaban las noches leyendo de claro en

claro, y los días de turbio en turbio” (23). Next is the

mention of angry outbursts and irritability. Though not so

in the first chapter, Don Quijote proves anxious to confront

physically people, often resorting to threats, such as in

his encounter with the shepherd who tosses aside his armor

while at the inn, the choleric Basque, the windmill/giants,

the barber, the lion, the puppets belonging to Ginés de

Pasamonte, and so forth. The more extreme of these

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encounters, those with inanimate objects, suggest an extreme

form of hypervigilance, which is also listed as a symptom.

Don Quijote does not have explicity difficulty

concentrating, except on the circuitous prose of his

chivalric literature, about which we are told that: “Con

estas razones perdía el pobre caballero el juicio, y

desvelábase por entendelas y desentrañarlas el sentido, que

no se lo sacara ni las entendiera el mesmo Aristóteles, si

resucitara para solo ello” (22). However, his narrator

certainly does. He has trouble remembering details that

would seem essential: “En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo

nombre no quiero acordarme. . .” (21), and later on forgets

the name of Sancho’s wife.

These aspects of increased arousal may take on a double

value that sheds light on the author’s stake in the work.

Miguel de Cervantes fought against the Turks until an injury

bereft him of the use of his left hand, and he was captured

and enslaved by Algerian pirates for five years (elements

which he autobiographically includes in one fashion or

another in Don Quijote). Such events would understandably

Reher 56

give him cause to some cynicism toward the warrior vocation.

Thus, the symptoms of increased arousal can be read as an

interpretation of the author’s own disillusionment with a

warrior identity that traces its roots back to the

Reconquista.

In the remainder of the text, Don Quijote sallies forth

across the plains of La Mancha, righting wrongs within a

personal hallucinatory complex in which windmills can be

giants, wine skins are decapitated heads, and wash basins

are helmets. His actions are a multi-formed repetition,

which reflects Freud’s quest for the traumatic origin. The

knight repeats the chivalric tales that are the center of

his obsession by living them out. His ultimate goal is to

initiate an embodiment of nostalgia that amounts to the

return to (or repetition of) Ovid’s Golden Age, while also

hinting at a repetition of the Reconquista. This corresponds

to another aspect of the pathology of PTSD:

acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience,illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes, including those that occur on awakening or

Reher 57

when intoxicated). Note: In young children, trauma-specific reenactment may occur (DSM-IV 427).

His peculiar sickness is laden with hallucinations, a sense

of reliving and reenacting the chivalric literature, and

flashbacks to fictionalized history.

What, then, is the source of this trauma? “Es, pues, de

saber que este sobredicho hidalgo, los ratos que estaba

ocioso, que eran los más del año, se daba a leer de

caballerías, con tanta afición y gusto, que olvidó casi de

todo punto el ejercicio de la casa y aun la administración

de su hacienda” (22). This connection of his actions to

chivalric literature, while logical, is also multi-faceted.

Given that his trauma is multi-dimensional, its origin is

both introspective (with an eye to saving himself from a

quiet death without renown) as well as extrospective (with

an eye toward saving society by reviving the Golden Age,

which can be done by returning to the chivalry of the

Reconquista). This trauma, then, seems to work at three

levels—personal, psychological, and historical. In all

three cases, they are impossible attempts manifesting

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themselves as repetition with the end of returning to an

unreachable origin.

Alonso Quijano, at an introspective and personal level,

is an idle old man, with no direct family and only a couple

of friends who visit him from time to time. It is easy to

see that his lack of stimulation necessitates the creation

of excitement. He responds to his need for struggle (after

all, the greatest stimulation comes from confronting and

untangling a challenge) by creating an opponent:

specifically, the foes on whom he projects identities; more

generally, the world at large on which he projects the need

to be saved from said foes, which I will address next. At

the same time, Alonso is looking for the source of the

nostalgia (fueled to a mania by his diligent readings) that

torments and entices his passivity with its activity. As in

the case with history, though, the quest for the origin of

nostalgia is also impossible; while the effects of nostalgia

are at times overwhelming (as is reflected by the knight’s

extreme attempts to reach the origin by repeating it), at

its exact point of origin, there is nothing. The era that

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forms the heart of nostalgia was, tragically, an era just

like any other, wrought with difficulties as all are. This

hollowness is echoed in historical events, which are

witnessed by those who are at times unaware of them, and

almost never aware of the full extent of the lasting legacy

that these incidents will have. This parallels how the eras

upon which nostalgia is projected were unappreciated by

those who actually witnessed them. After all, nostalgia is

also a historical event.

This introspective personal quest directly guides the

psychology that dictates his extrospective actions. Through

the former, we come to understand that Alonso Quijano’s

primary interest in chivalric literature is inaugurating

another Golden Age by righting the injustices of the land.

This benevolent motivation is in keeping with the side of

his character that we come to see when we learn his true

name and title at the end of the book, “Alonso Quijano, a

quien mis costumbres me dieron renombre de Bueno” (862).

The Don explains his ultimate goal:

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Mas agora, ya triunfa la pereza de la diligencia, la ociosidad del trabajo, el vicio de la virtud, la arrogancia de la valentía y la teórica de la práctica de las armas, que sólo vivieron y resplandecieron en las edades del oro y en los andantes caballeros. Si no,díganme: ¿quién más honesto y más valiente que el famoso Amadís de Gaula? ¿quién más discreto que Palmerín de Inglaterra? ¿quién más acomodado y manual que Tirante el Blanco? . . . [the Don continues to listeleven other knights, citing them as avatars of virtue]Todos estos caballeros, y otros muchos que pudiera decir, señor cura, fueron caballeros andantes, luz y gloria de la caballería. Déstos, o tales como éstos, quisiera yo que fueran los de mi arbitrio, que a serlo,su majestad se hallara bien servido y ahorrara de muchogasto, y el Turco se quedara pelando las barbas. Y conesto, no quiero quedar en mi casa, pues no me saca el capellán della. . . (445).

Responding to a personal traumatic event, he is looking to

repeat what he has read in chivalric literature; this is

exemplified in his encyclopedic repetition of the

protagonists from multiple chivalric works. He is trying to

fix contemporary Spain by returning it to its point of

historical origin (the fictionalized era of chivalry) in

order to return a metaphysical state of origin (the Ovidian

Golden Age). It is here fitting as well that his point of

origin is still unattainable—the epics he seeks to embody

never existed, no more so than did the Ovidian golden age.

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This outward projection on Spanish society, though,

inevitably calls to mind the historical Reconquista.

Don Quijote’s comment that “el Turco se quedara pelando

las barbas” implies a connection to the continued war

against the Muslims and thus with the Reconquista. Chivalric

literature and the Reconquista overlap thematically;

moreover, works such as Orlando Furioso (1516) deal directly of

the Reconquista. Although chivalric books were popular at

this time throughout Western Europe, “the popularity

of . . . romances in the sixteenth century was, in reality,

a more democratic revival in the Spanish Peninsula of a

medieval passion for the literature of chivalry. . . [T]he

conflicts of Christian and infidel supplied so many themes

for artistic expression” (Leonard 14). Given the martial

heritage of Spain, a nation that was continually in a state

of conquest for the eight centuries preceding Cervantes, Don

Quijote is trying to recapture the Reconquista.

From a broader historical range then, chivalric

literature serves as a conduit leading into the past that

indicates nostalgia and remorse on the part of the author.

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Echoing what we have already seen with other marginalized

characters, the distancing of the protagonist from the

social center enables a cathartic critique of the cultural

institutions, allowing (or obligating) both the writer and

reader to face honestly the events that have caused the

trauma manifesting itself in the whole of the work. The Don

himself is a marginal character. As Alonso Quijano, he is a

man near the end of his life, almost alone, on an estate

that affords only minor luxuries. In short, he is of little

consequence or interest to the society around him, and even

less so to the reader. As Don Quijote, while of greater

interest, he is still rejected by many who encounter him,

such as the Choleric Basque, or the galley slaves whom the

knight frees. Even those who engage in his play often do so

with the end of their own amusement or with the end of

manipulating him to return to his old life, never sharing in

his vision.

Yet this aspect of marginality offers him potential

opportunities to interact with other marginalized characters

in a way that society would not permit, whether when

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listening sympathetically to the mad Cardenio in the

mountains, or heaping sincere praise on the prostitutes at

the inn. It is curious how many of his marginal encounters

place him within the conflict between Muslims and Christians

and, with it, the nostalgia that both events entail. For

instance, he encounters a chain-gang being taken off to man

the galleys in the war against the Turks. In setting them

free, he seems to be acting against the war; perhaps, as

with the death of the biological father in Lazarillo, there is

disillusionment as the war against Islam continues, even

though the Reconquista is finally over.

Additionally, there are two encounters with Muslims.

The sympathetic nature of both encounters is a symbolic

attempt to right a historic wrong by imagining a

reconciliation with the other who was in reality destroyed.

In listening to the account told by a captive whom Don

Quijote and Sancho encounter at an inn, they meet Zoraida,

an ex-Muslim princess who abandoned her father to come to

Christianity. Her story is an allusion to the story of

Florinda, the alleged mistress of King Roderic, who betrayed

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him and all of Spain by aiding the invading Moors, though,

in this case, it is the Muslim father who is betrayed. This

reversal places the marginalized father in a position of

sympathy. Later on, Don Quijote encounters Ana Félix and

Don Ricote, two Moriscos (converts from Islam to

Christianity) who were expelled from Spain. The former

describes the circumstances of her banishment:

De aquella nación más desdichada que prudente, sobre quien ha llovido estos días un mar de desgracias, nací yo de moriscos padres engendrada. En la corriente de sudesventura fui yo por dos tíos míos llevada a Berbería,sin que me aprovechase decir que era cristiana, como, en efecto, lo soy, y no de las fingidas ni aparentes, sino de las verdaderas y católicas. No me valió con losque tenían a cargo nuestro miserable destierro decir esta verdad, ni mis tíos quisieron creerla. Antes la tuvieron por mentira y por invención para quedarme en la tierra donde había nacido, y así por fuerza más que por grado, me trujeron consigo. Tuve una madre cristiana y un padre discreto y cristiano ni más ni menos. Mamé la fe católica en la leche; criéme con buenas costumbres. Ni en la lengua ni en ellas jamás, a mi parecer, di señales de ser morisca. (816)

Although neither the narrator nor the Don take a moral

stance on the issue, the reader cannot help but to empathize

with the unfair expulsion of Ana Felix “tan hermos[a], y tan

gallard[a], y tan humilde” (816). This echoes the cruel

treatment of Lazarillo’s father, as well as racism of the

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Infantes brothers in El Cid. As in the other two works, the

situation itself silently remonstrates the abuse in a way

that the authors never could. As seen previously, this

lenient treatment of the other unsettles the stance of the

Moor as antagonist.

Yet, at the same time, it is ironic. Don Quijote’s

quest to return to the past depends on antagonistic Moors,

yet in one of the final chapters of his quest he is

confronted with the humanity of his foe. It is after this

(and a few other events) that he returns home, prepared to

renounce forever his chivalric identity. The end, then, can

be read as an alternate history in which the chivalric

knight is able to look beyond his fear of the other and the

need to conquer him, instead embracing him as the brother

that was and is essential to his identity.

Part IV: The First Crusade to the Holy Land

In the span of time leading up to the first Crusade in

1095, Muslims had gained control of most of North Africa,

stretching into southern Spain. This included the capture

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and destruction of the Holy Sepulcher in 1008, and the

harassment of pilgrims journeying to Jerusalem. After a

lull in which the Byzantines were able to make gains on

their territory, Muslim forces were strengthened by the

recently converted Turks. The Muslims captured the emperor

at the battle of Manzikert that proved disastrous for the

Byzantines by opening their entire empire to the invaders.

Constantinople sent back a frantic message to Pope Urban II

who then organized a vast preaching campaign to persuade

volunteers to aid the East. The Crusaders came in three

waves, stopping first in Constantinople to meet the Emperor

Alexius before heading toward the Levant. The first and

third wave failed, ultimately being annihilated by the Turks

on account of poor planning and the opposition’s superior

numbers. The second wave, however, made great, almost

miraculous, gains in spite of various obstacles, (including

the indifference of Alexius, disease, and a constant dearth

of supplies) taking Antioch, Edessa and Jerusalem, which

would be held by Christians as kingdoms as well as several

smaller cities. The expansion ended with the fall of

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Jerusalem, which was pillaged in a massacre of both Jews and

Muslims. The Kingdom of Jerusalem would last until it fell

to the Egyptian Mamluks in 1291, two centuries after it had

been founded.

Dynamics

It is essential to recall that this was a very violent

moment in European history. The Church had repeatedly tried

to institute a “Peace of God” to stem the violence and

protect the clergy and the poor. This was met with limited

success until the first Crusade: “out of [which] had come

the conviction that the very aggressiveness that had broken

up society could be put to good, God-given purposes if only

the laity could be disposed to canalize their energies into

the service of the Church” (5). The rocky nature with which

this was undertaken is demonstrated: “The vicious

persecution of Jews in France and Germany, which opened the

march of some of the armies, was marked by looting and

extortion” (The Crusades, 19). The Crusades were, in

addition to other things, an attempt to direct the internal

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violence outward, and also represent Europe’s first willful

attempt to come into contact with an “other.” The immature

and brutal nature of these encounters is a reflection of the

relative youth of European identity as a whole, which, in

traveling abroad, was making a fledgling attempt to assert

its identity as a unified, trans-continental entity. This

will factor in later, as we come to understand how attitudes

toward violence change over the centuries in which European

identity solidified.

A final consideration is the presence of trauma in the

Christian faith. To contextualize better this, it is

beneficial to consider Freud’s interpretation of Judaism in

Moses and Monotheism. Freud offers a unique interpretation of

the book of Exodus, suggesting that the Hebrews were led to

freedom by an Egyptian who was intent on preserving the

monotheistic faith that was then threatened in Egypt. The

Israelites murdered their leader, and he eventually

conflates with a volcano god, and a religious leader of the

same name arose and took his place. Freud suggests that the

centrality of the Egyptian Moses and the long-suffering

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attitude behind Judaism itself are both symptoms of the

trauma.

This model, a religious figure dying by the hand of his

own people before being resurrected, is echoed in

Christianity. In the same way, Christianity can be figured

to have elements of the guilt and trauma that Freud notes in

Judaism. Accordingly, the Crusades may be viewed as a

response to the traumatic elements of Christianity. Jesus

was crucified for the sins of all, allowing His followers to

attain salvation while also placing the responsibility of

His death on them. The survivor’s guilt that results from

what is an otherwise positive situation is a form of

winner’s trauma. This line of thought is reflected in

frequent invocations of the crucifixion to encourage

Christians to join the Crusade. Baldric of Dol’s account of

Urban II’s call for a Crusade reflects this: “This very

city, in which, as you all know, Christ himself suffered for

us, because our sins demanded it, has been reduced to the

pollution of paganism and, as I say it to our disgrace,

withdrawn from the service of God” (Allen 43). Riley-Smith

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mentions an early French Crusade song with similar

sentiments, which I quote in the original French:

“Chevalers, cher vus purpensez, / Vus ki d’arrnes estes

preisez; / A celui voz cors presentez / Ki pur vus flit en

cruiz drecez.” (Oxford, 98).

Gerusalemme Liberata: Introduction

As a primary text, I have chosen Gerusalemme Liberata by

Torquato Tasso. While not an accurate historical guide to

the first Crusade, it instead does shed light on the

Crusade’s likely aftermath. Tasso was born in 1544, son of

a poet and courtier. He initially studied law before

turning to poetry with a good deal of success. Shortly

after creating Gerusalemme Liberata in 1575, he began to suffer

from a neurosis (likely due to schizophrenia), spending

several years as a prisoner in the hospital of St Ann, then

wandering through Italy in the last years of his life.

One of his central concerns was “writing the first true

epic since antiquity. . . ” (2). Esolen indicates that, in

Tasso’s Discourses on the Heroic Poem, he indicates that he

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selected the Crusades “mainly due to considerations of epic

form. . . The event described . . . must not be so long ago

that men have forgotten it, or so recent that it cannot

admit of the marvelous” (9). Tasso tries to establish a

cultural origin from which he can revive the epic genre;

this would solidify the stature of Europe in the shadow of

its Greco-Roman heritage. Fittingly, the epic attempts to

locate other origins, such as the first discovery of the New

World, which Charles and Ubaldo encounter on their way to

rescue Rinaldo; another is Jerusalem, seen as the

geographical origin of Christianity.

While his account roughly follows the historical

outline of the fall of Jerusalem, Tasso adds a few

significant episodes. The narrative begins when Godfrey,

leader of the Latins in the Middle East, is visited by the

angel Gabriel, who urges him to resume his quest toward

Jerusalem. The King of Jerusalem, Aladine, oppresses the

local Christians, while his sorcerer Ismen endeavors to

charm an image of the Virgin Mary to protect the city. The

image is stolen before this can occur, and a Christian

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couple accepts the blame in order to spare the populace from

slaughter. They are saved by the warrior Clorinda, who

offers her service in exchange for their lives.

The powers of Satan now rise up, inspiring the king of

Damascus to send his beautiful daughter Armida to the

Frankish Camp. She creates quite a stir as most of the

knights fall for her; she claims to be a dethroned princess

in need of support to regain her crown. She is given a

group of ten knights, and many more follow her in the dead

of night, diminishing the crusading force. Moreover, the

champion Rinaldo, after killing a fellow knight in a fit of

rage, sneaks off, weakening the camp even further. Argante,

a renowned warrior in the service of the king of Jerusalem,

challenges the Franks to single combat; Tancred accepts, and

the two fight until nightfall. After agreeing to a weeklong

truce, the two part to recuperate. A few nights later,

Erminia, princess of Jerusalem, succumbs to her love for

Tancred and, disguising herself as Clorinda, sets out toward

the camp to heal him. She is ambushed by Christians, and

flees into a forest. Tancred sees her, and, in love with

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Clorinda, follows her. Erminia flees until she encounters a

group of shepherds, with whom she takes refuge.

The Latins attack Jerusalem, and are repelled until a

troop of Christians comes to the rescue—the knights who had

earlier followed Armida have been disenchanted. They

disclose that they were rescued by Rinaldo, who was thought

to be dead. That night, Clorinda and Argante sneak into the

Frankish camp and burn the siege equipment; Tancred chases

them, and eventually duels with Clorinda, slaying her. He

is then overwhelmed by grief for having killed his love.

The Crusaders decide to rebuild their siege machines, but

are blocked by an enchantment of fear placed on the forest.

It is revealed that only Rinaldo, who is now captive of

love-struck Armida, can lift the curse. When Rinaldo is

rescued by two other knights, Armida vows revenge. After

creating three siege towers, the Franks launch a decisive

assault, in which Tancred kills Argante, and the king’s

forces are pursued into the citadel. However, now the

Egyptian army appears, made up of innumerable nations.

After seeing through a scheme in which Egyptian soldiers

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dress as the French to gain access to kill Godfrey, the

Crusaders rout the Muslims. Godfrey refuses to ransom the

captive Egyptian king and frees him before finally

fulfilling his vow to pray in the Holy Sepulcher.

Gerusalemme Liberata: Analysis

A traumatic reading of Gerusalemme is by no means new:

Freud uses Clorinda’s death to exemplify the repetitive

quality of trauma. My goal is to expand this and to take it

in the direction of winner’s trauma in order to establish

that the end of the first Crusade with the fall of Jerusalem

led to subtle remorse that manifests itself in Tasso’s text.

This remorse is seen in the validation of the other, Tasso’s

rewriting of the massacre of Jerusalem, and the way

sexuality is used to blur further the lines between self and

other as well as to critique the trauma caused by

Christianity.

As with previous works, Gerusalemme includes an

extensive validation of the other that acts as a wistful,

fictionalized attempt to undo the fear that destroyed the

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other in order to reconcile with it instead. For instance,

the portrayal of pagans is often quite favorable—Tasso

expresses respect for Solimon and Argante as formidable

warriors, and also describes the beauty of Armida and

Erminia as beyond comparison. Soliman, in particular, is

treated with especial sympathy and compassion. Tasso

depicts him as quite human—a king who is desperate to regain

his lands, the victim of the Franks.

ma poi che contra i Turchi e gli altri infidipassàr ne l'Asia l'arme peregrine,fur sue terre espugnate, ed ei sconfittoben fu due fiate in general conflitto. (9.4.5-8)

Indeed, the demon Alecto, and later Ismen both take

advantage of this to bring him into the fray, citing his

“rimembrando ognor l'antico scorno / e de l'imperio suo

l'alte ruine,” (9.7.5-6). One can hardly blame him for his

hatred of the Franks, and this would have been accentuated

in Renaissance Europe, where attachment to a homeland was a

stronger part of identity than it is at present. Later,

Soliman’s favorite page is slain in battle by a Christian

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soldier; Tasso cannot help but call this “crudel!” (9.84.3),

and his description of Soliman’s grief is evocative:

E in atto sí gentil languir tremantigli occhi e cader su 'l tergo il collo mira;cosí vago è il pallore, e da' sembiantidi morte una pietà sí dolce spira,ch'ammollí il cor che fu dur marmo inanti,e il pianto scaturí di mezzo a l'ira. (9.86.1-6)

At his death, Tasso reaffirms his valor, saying he is one

who “né atto fa se non se altero e grande” (20.107.8). In

addition to this, though, Tasso’s knights show great

kindness and respect toward their pagan foes; Godfrey sets

the Egyptian king free instead of slaying or ransoming him;

Tancred demands that his foe Argante is buried honorably,

even while suffering from the injuries that Argante

inflicted.

Additionally, Tasso blurs the lines between the two

faiths readily. Clorinda, we discover, is actually a born

princess of the sole Christian kingdom in Africa, and

becomes a Christian in her dying breath after a life as an

unrepentant pagan. The eunuch who has raised her from

childhood reveals that her protection and prowess in battle

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are in part due to the very religion that she opposes. The

Crusader Rambaldo of Gascony, under the charms of Armida,

becomes a pagan and is killed by his former peers. Vafrine,

however, is the greatest example:

Cosí parla Vafrino e non trattiensi,ma cangia in lungo manto il suo farsetto,e mostra fa del nudo collo, e prended'intorno al capo attorcigliate bende;

la faretra s'adatta e l'arco siro,e barbarico sembra ogni suo gesto.Stupiron quei che favellar l'udiroed in diverse lingue esser sí prestoch'egizio in Menfi o pur fenice in Tirol'avria creduto e quel popolo e questo (18.59.5-18.60.6)

Vafrine adapts the guise of the enemy thoroughly, to the

point of completely adopting his semblance. This symbolic

confusion is complemented by the Egyptians who do the same

thing, dressing as the Franks in order to gain fatal access

to Godfrey in the heat of the final battle. The implication

is that there is, in reality, little that separates the two

groups—clothing, languages, gestures—and, at will, these

borders can be erased and crossed. By invoking his reader’s

sympathy and by including characters that readily cross the

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lines, Tasso questions how significant the actual

differences are—ultimately, the reader is forced to see that

it is less a moral difference and more a religious one. The

pagans, though committed to the wrong god, show virtue, and

invoke their god’s name with as much faith as the

Christians.

Rewriting the Slaughter of Jerusalem

The humanity shown to the other (Tasso views it as

essential to Christianity and chivalry) is one method by

which the author navigates the difficult slaughter of

Jerusalem. Raymond of Aguilers, who served as a chaplain

for the Count of Toulouse, describes the event: “in the

Temple and the porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to

their knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a just and

splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled

with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had suffered so

long from their blasphemies. The city was filled with

corpses and blood” (Allen 77). Raymond, amazed at the

violence, cannot help but to attribute the slaughter to

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divine justice, having no other way to explain or deal with

it; at the same time, it is unclear whether Raymond feels

the same need to justify or excuse it as the Humanist Tasso

would.

This event is understandably problematic in Tasso’s

endeavor to create a noble and gentle Crusader.

Accordingly, he consciously tries to minimize and side step

it by limiting it to a couple of stanzas when Jerusalem is

first breached and again when the citadel is invaded.

However, it manifests itself repeatedly in the author’s

subconscious. In contrast to Raymond, Tasso condemns the

massacre:

Mentre qui segue la solinga guerra,che privata cagion fe' cosí ardente,l'ira de' vincitor trascorre ed erraper la città su 'l popolo nocente.Or chi giamai de l'espugnata terrapotrebbe a pien l'imagine dolenteritrarre in carte od adeguar parlandolo spettacolo atroce e miserando?

Ogni cosa di strage era già pieno,vedeansi in mucchi e in monti i corpi avolti:là i feriti su i morti, e qui giacienosotto morti insepolti egri sepolti.Fuggian premendo i pargoletti al senole meste madri co' capegli sciolti,

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e 'l predator, di spoglie e di rapinecarco, stringea le vergini nel crine. (19.30-31)

Tasso distances himself from this by emphasizing the

division between the devout knights and the commoners. In

reality, such a division existed, but there is nothing that

suggests that knights did not join in the sack. Godfrey

condemns the sack, saying:

Troppo, ahi! troppo di strage oggi s'è visto,troppa in alcuni avidità de l'oro;rapir piú oltra, e incrudelir i' vieto.Or divulghin le trombe il mio divieto." 19.52.5-8

However, it is clear earlier in the work that Tasso is

haunted by the slaughter, though he tries to deny it—perhaps

because of his overwhelming fear of the Catholic

Inquisition, or a reluctance to confront historical demons.

Accordingly, he repeats the massacre of Jerusalem in order

to try to gain control of it and force it into an acceptable

mode that would allow his crusaders to be gentle. As the

two knights set off to rescue Rinaldo, they encounter the

remains of Carthage, whose destruction Tasso attributes as a

consequence of its pride. This implies that perhaps the

massacre was deserved as well. He then adopts a fatalistic

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perspective: “Muoiono le città, muoiono i regni, / copre i

fasti e le pompe arena ed erba,” (15.20.3-4). This suggests

that the massacre of Jerusalem was simply part of its

natural course as a great city. Yet the guilt seems to

manifest itself elsewhere, when, in describing how the

Franks cut down trees to make their war machines3, Tasso

writes with unusual violence and empathy:

L'un l'altro essorta che le piante atterri,e faccia al bosco inusitati oltraggi.Caggion recise da i pungenti ferrile sacre palme e i frassini selvaggi,i funebri cipressi e i pini e i cerri,l'elci frondose e gli alti abeti e i faggi,gli olmi mariti, a cui talor s'appoggiala vite, e con piè torto al ciel se 'n poggia. (3.75.1-8)

He describes the trees with a strange intensity, listing

their varieties, and attributing sanctity and gravity to

them, personifying them to the point of feeling insults.

Additionally, he recalls the image of pools of blood in

describing other battles, “Ristagna il sangue in gorghi, e

3 Here it is essential to remember that the same trees are later given aspiritual presence that manifests itself as Clorinda and Armida, both ofwhom represent the more fragile, endearing side of the other.

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corre in rivi / pieni di corpi estinti e di mal vivi”

(19.106.7-8), echoing the imagery of Raymond of Aguilers.

The clearest form in which the slaughter is repeated,

however, occurs when the King of Jerusalem briefly considers

slaughtering his Christian subjects. The scope of the

intended massacre echoes the destruction of Carthage as well

as the actual slaughter of Jerusalem:

Gli ucciderò, faronne acerbi scempi,svenerò i figli a le lor madri in seno,arderò loro alberghi e insieme i tèmpi,questi i debiti roghi a i morti fièno;e su quel lor sepolcro in mezzo a i votivittime pria farò de' sacerdoti. (1.87.3-8)

However, in a theme that persists later on, Tasso’s virgins

save the day—first Sophronia offers her life in exchange for

the towns, taking the blame for the theft of the image of

the Virgin Mary. When she and Olindo are at the point of

being burned, Clorinda saves the day, exchanging her service

for their lives. Occurring near the beginning of the piece,

the episode seems to serve clearly as an intended

counterweight to the actual slaughter in Jerusalem at the

end of the piece. On one level, the episode seems to

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justify the historical massacre by showing that the pagans

were equally willing to massacre the Christians; on a deeper

level, though, it is admonishing—among Christians, and even

pagans, there was someone bold enough to take a stand

against the slaughter, even at the high cost. This is

lacking in the final slaughter, where Godfrey in vain orders

his men to check their rage. As a humanist, Tasso is unable

to couch the slaughter as being part of the will of God as

Raymond can. Rather, he feels compelled to condemn it, to

reach to the point of origin and undo it.

Sex and Violence

As Esolen points out, “In Tasso. . . war is intensely sexual,

as sex is hostile” (emphasis his, 12). The use of sex as a

distraction from war is a central theme in Gerusalemme. A

simple reading would suggest that Tasso is urging that

Christians dedicate themselves foremost to the love of God,

with all other forms of love being secondary. However, a

step back reveals a somewhat more complicated role. Tasso’s

women (as seductresses and the seduced) always serve as the

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bridge between the two cultures, acting as a symbol of

duality that complements the masculine centrality. Women

are used to introduce the concept of playful interaction

with the other, which is ultimately removed and mourned in

the end.

I will begin by exploring the aspect of duality

associated with the women. Though not the first woman

mentioned, Armida’s introduction is still significant both

for its importance (which rivals Clorinda’s) and for its

emphasis on the feminine (which is less prominent in the

Amazon’s first appearance). She is described:

Fra sí contrarie tempre, in ghiaccio e in foco,in riso e in pianto, e fra paura e spene,inforsa ogni suo stato, e di lor giocol'ingannatrice donna a prender viene; (4.93.1-4)

Essentially, in an act that foreshadows the importance of

women in the rest of the narrative, Armida embodies gender-

duality, which is reinforced further by her religious

duality.

The women function as a distraction from traumatic

events, that is, an escape route from the atrocities that

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the Crusaders are obligated by faith to endure. This is

reminiscent of another symptom of PTSD: “Persistent

avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma. . . ”

(DSMV-IV 427). The knights are caught between a pull toward

the past (which promises to be death) and a pull toward the

future (which is procreation), even though their victory is

a foregone conclusion from the moment that Gabriel announces

it in the first Canto.

The pull to the origin is strong and diverse—its

promise of glory and wisdom is unavoidably tinged by death.

The knights must return to the geographic birthplace of

Christianity, and return it to its pristine state as a

Christian territory. It is significant that the older

Godfrey and Raymond temper the brash youth of Tancred and

Rinaldo, both of whom are in the heat of their prime, in

contrast to their mentors. The guide that shows Charles and

Ribaldo how to rescue Rinaldo is also an old sage whom they

call “padre,” and who leads them through “nel grembo immense

/ de la terra, che tutto in sé produce” (14.41.1-2). The

underground domain simultaneously calls to mind the womb of

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mankind, which was created from dust of the earth, and also

a tomb. Rinaldo is only able to awaken from the witch’s

spell after seeing a mirror engraved with images of the

heroic deeds wrought by his deceased forefathers.

Most importantly, they are bound to the past sacrifice

of Christ—“ Quanto devi al gran Re che 'l mondo regge!”

(18.7.1) exclaims Peter the Hermit when Rinaldo returns from

his amorous tryst with Armida. This calls to mind the

trauma of Christianity that we previously mentioned that was

a dynamic in the historic first Crusade. Yet, just as the

past is laden with the dead, the path that is obedient to

the past promises also to be. Godfrey’s vision of the

spirits of deceased Crusaders battling against the pagans in

Jerusalem serves as a grim reminder of how many have already

fallen, and how many will yet pay an equal price for their

obeisance toward the past. Fittingly, it is not the

imminence of death that troubles the Christians, but rather

its presence around them. The dead are welcomed into

eternal bliss; however, those left behind are forced to cope

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with the trauma of loss which Tasso powerfully describes in

lamenting each death.

The women, on the other hand, promise life. Erminia is

a renowned healer who saves Tancred’s life. Sophronia,

followed by Clorinda, intercede on the behalf of the

innocent to save their lives. Even Armida’s elaborate ruse

to weaken the forces of the Latins extends their lives by

taking them out of warfare. Of course, this promise of life

includes procreation—as Esolen mentions, Tancred’s attempt

to draw Clorinda aside for a ‘personal duel’ is laden with

sexual energy. Erminia heals Tancred through the sacrifice

of her scarf and her hair, both of which connote some

sensuality; prior to this, she had attempted to sneak into

his tent at night. Armida’s sexuality is far more explicit

in the case of Rinaldo and the nude nymphs who serve her,

but her use of phallic symbols is also key: she turns

infatuated followers into fish, attracts Rinaldo to the

grove with a sign written on a pillar in the middle of a

garden, and later is impersonated by the massive tree in the

center of the enchanted forest. The women suggest a

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procreative future—a prolonged life and also progeny. The

women represent the potential for legacy and lineage that

the warriors sacrifice by choosing the past instead.

Accordingly, Charles and Ribaldo are led past the strait of

Gibraltar into the New World by the woman Fortune who is

their guide. The association of moving away from their vow

in the Old World to the prosperity and opportunity of the

New World symbolically critiques the Crusade as being

antithetical to Europe’s burgeoning expansion, directing it

back instead to the ancient city that promises no such

material gains.

The coexistence of the two diametric paths is multi-

purposed. First, the women are pagan, while the men are

Christian. The loving relationships that result—as pagans

fall for Christians and vice versa—further distorts the

distinction between the two groups. The union of pagan and

Christian is represented as being as natural or as

acceptable as the union between man and woman by being

placed on the same level. Tasso here offers a curious line:

Rinaldo, infatuated with Armida, says:

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a me quegli occhi onde beata bèi,ché son, se tu no 'l sai, ritratto verode le bellezze tue gli incendi miei;la forma lor, la meraviglia a pienopiú che il cristallo tuo mostra il mio seno. (16.21.4-8).

This notion of mirroring is a close connection; it suggests

that for Armida (and Rinaldo as well), her true beauty and

her true self are not in her own eyes, but rather in the

other’s. Significantly, Rinaldo is broken from the spell by

a mirror into his past, which shatters the hope brought by

the mirror into the future. As will be further explored,

the presence of the other is trumped by the presence of the

past.

The intertwining of the two sides creates moments of

play with the other that include magic, healing, and love—

these passages reflect Tasso at his most creative. Of

necessity, they are times between the violence, antithetical

to it. The violence destroys the play: Clorinda is killed

by her lover; Rinaldo leaves Armida to resume the Crusade

and must defend himself while she tries to kill him with

arrows, and again when he must save her from suicide in the

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end. Erminia is only able to gain Tancred’s attention when

he is unable to fight. Ultimately, it is the final battle

that permanently puts an end to the play. This is parallel

to the end of the convivencia that was inaugurated with the

success of the Reconquista, mentioned in my third section.

The play between self and other comes to an end because duty

must be fulfilled; yet, in concluding the task, there seems

to be little left—Rinaldo frees the forest, and two

(admittedly long) cantos later, the war is won. The poem

closes anticlimactically, as

Né pur deposto il sanguinoso manto,viene al tempio con gli altri il sommo duce;e qui l'arme sospende, e qui devotoil gran Sepolcro adora e scioglie il voto. (20.144.5-8)

The ethereal bliss that the reader hoped for does not come,

and there is no elaborate celebration of victory; rather, we

are reminded that all of this has been out of obligation and

at a high cost in human life as Godfrey completes his vow in

a tomb.

This destruction of play takes on a narrative level as

well. In contrast to the rather Spartan accounts of the

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battle for Jerusalem, the author interpolates a good deal—

the first 18 or so stanzas, though including basic

characters of the actual Crusade, are especial proof of

this. Tasso, aware of imminent limit of his material,

attempts to distract his characters (and thus his reader)

from the inevitable conclusion of the text. This end to the

nostalgia signifies a return to the harsh realities of the

Tasso’s 1500’s, in which Jerusalem has fallen, and Turks and

Protestants threaten Catholic stability. Gerusalemme, then,

acts as a vehicle of nostalgia, a return to the origin of an

unthreatened and pure Christianity, and to an origin of

European hegemony. Naturally, Tasso wishes to maximize the

time he and the reader can spend within its throes; he

mourns the end as he is forced to put his hero within a tomb

that symbolizes at once the start of his historical

immortality and his death as a narrative subject.

Part IV: Conclusion

While clearly a significant subtext, winner’s trauma is

never mentioned directly. The primary texts take a far more

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circuitous approach: the validation of the other often takes

the form of rather abstruse allegory or in minor,

marginalized characters. However, the cultural context of

these authors was important—as indicated, there was

tremendous pressure to conform. Externally, pressure was

exerted by cultural entities like the monarchy or church,

while internally, it came from a simple, natural desire to

be on the side of right. Tasso worried obsessively about

the scrutiny of the Inquisition, while Cervantes was briefly

excommunicated prior to writing Don Quijote, and mocks the

Inquisition as clerics rifle through Alonso’s library,

choosing which texts should be burned. Accordingly, their

true sentiments would only appear in subtext—perhaps even

subconsciously, as in the case of Tasso.

This subtext also creates a curious and necessary

parallel to post-colonial theory today. Post colonialism is

a response to “The geo-political configuration of scales

that measured the nature of human beings in terms of an idea

of history that Western Christians assumed to be the total

and true one for every inhabitant of the planet” (Mignolo

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4). This highly Occidentalized history has neglected the

alternative narratives and realities of those that the West

perceived as “other.” Logically, trauma theory has found a

good place here, (such as work like Migrant Revolutions (2008)

by Valerie Kaussen or Postcolonial Paradoxes in French Colonial Writing

(2001) by Jeannie Suk), as it is an apt approach to “the

colonial wound, physical and/or psychological, [which] is a

consequence of racism, the hegemonic discourse that questions

the humanity of all those who do not belong to the locus of

enunciation. . . of those who assign the standards of

classification and assign to themselves the right to

classify” (Mignolo 8).

The notion of winner’s trauma parallels the post-

colonial trauma by suggesting that the atrocities wreaked by

the oppressors also affected the oppressors, though

obviously to a far lesser extent. This implies the

existence of a parallel wound which continues to gape into

the present day as the legacy of conquest and oppression

persist to haunt the West. Yet, the presence of this wound

begs a curious question. As we have seen, trauma is ever a

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quest to return to a point of origin. To do this, we must

ask, what was it that led the West to expand in the first

place? This is a crucial question when approaching the

Crusades, which were in many senses early attempts to

colonize (though, admittedly, not always geographically as

was the case of the Levant; the Albigensian Crusade was more

of a cultural colonization, as the Reconquista was more

political). Undoubtedly, as the author Jared Diamond, who

wrote Germs, Guns and Steel (2005), points out, the West had many

unique advantages to aid its ultimate quest for Hegemony,

but the question remains—what was it that sparked the

exploratory missions that were fundamental to this? This

was not a universal tendency—China and India both attained

similar levels of technology, yet focused on consolidation

of their territories; Europe, in exchange, proved itself to

be comfortable with fragmentation up until the previous

century where the EU began to take shape. Population seems

not to have been a problem—while Europeans availed

themselves of the lands they conquered, there was no great

flood of colonists into the New World. Spaniards over-ran

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Central and South America in search of gold, but the French

and English clung on to marginal areas of land on the coast

for the first several centuries.

I propose, rather, that there has been a postcolonial

trauma on the fringe of European identity which has been

thoroughly repressed and perhaps even forgotten due to

extensive acculturation. Much of Europe, after all, was

once under the domain of Rome—former colonial powers like

Britain, Spain, France still contain many cities that still

bear Roman names, and the empires of these nations pose a

marked contrast to the lesser colonial efforts of Germany or

Italy (though, admittedly, the fragmentation of both

countries also played a part). Over the course of time,

they forgot their original Celtic and Gallic cultures,

learning to speak Latin and adopting Roman customs. At the

same time, they remained marginalized frontier states,

always in the shadow of Rome, the center. Then, near the

end of the 5th century, Rome fell, or at least faded,

leaving the provinces on their own, forcing them to fall

back on the only culture that they still remembered. This

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was combined with the urging of the Catholic Church to

restore the pax romana4 and the Church’s practice of

cataloguing the past’s literature and preserving Latin. The

shadow of the Roman Empire continued to stretch over Europe

long past its political significance.

This creates a telling parallel. Just as the

conforming pressures of the Middle Ages stemmed from a

desire to reassemble the Roman Empire, the tendency to

expand and conquer was an attempt to also compete with Rome,

which was the greatest colonial power of its time. Part of

equaling Rome, restoring it, included the same expansionism

that Rome had practiced. At the center of this is a desire

to return to Rome—to return to what stood for the point of

cultural origin. At the same time, the colonization was a

subliminal effort to understand the mechanics of

colonization that had continuously tormented the European

consciousness. It was an effort to gain control over the

concept of colonization by becoming the center. Just as the

victim of a car accident will repeatedly experience that

4 A period of reduced warfare proposed by the historian Edward Gibbon lasting from 27 BCE to 280 AD

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moment of unexpected rupture, Europe’s attempt to expand

beyond its borders was an attempt to regain the moment of

social rupture that was brought about by being colonized.

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Works Cited

Allen, S. J. and Emilie Amt, ed. The Crusades: a Reader. Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 2008. Print.

Arlow, Jacob A. “Trauma and Pathogenesis.” The Seduction Theory

in its Second Century. Ed. Michael I. Good. Madison, CT:

International Universities Press, Inc, 2006. Print.

Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Print.

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la

Mancha. Ed. Tom Lathrop. Newark, DE: European

Masterpieces, 2003. Print.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Washington

DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1994. Print.

Di Pere, Laura. “Foreign Bodies” Trauma, Corporeality, and Textuality in

Contemporary American Culture. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Print.

Esolen, Anthony M. “Introduction.” Jerusalem Delivered. By

Torquato Tasso. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2000. 1-14.

Print.

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Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its Discontents. New York: Norton,

1962. Print.

Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological works

of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 23. London: Hogarth, 1971. Print.

Friedman, Angela. Death, Men, and Modernism. New York:

Routledge, 2003. Print.

Hunt, Nigel C. Memory, War and Trauma. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2010. Print

La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de Sus Fortunas y Adversidades. Ed.

Annette Grant Cash and James C. Murray. Newark, DE:

European Masterpieces, 2002. Print.

Leonard, Irving A. Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of

Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century

New World. Berkeley: University of California, 1992.

Print

Menocal, Rosa María. The Ornament of the World. New York:

Little, Brown and Company, 2002. Print.

Mignolo, Walter D. The Idea of Latin America. Malden, MA:

Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Print.

The Poem of the Cid. London: Penguin Books, 1984. Print.

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Riley-Smith, John. A History: the Crusades. 2nd ed. New Haven:

Yale University Press, 2005. Print.

Riley Smith, John. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Print.

Suedfeld, Peter. "Reactions to Societal Trauma: Distress

and/or Eustress." Political Psychology 18.4 (1997): 13.

Print.

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text.it. 21 april 2006. Web. 13 Mar. 2011. Online.

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APPENDIX ADiagnostic criteria for 309.81 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder(Page 427)

A. The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following were present:

(1) the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others

(2) the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Note: In children, this maybe expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior

B. The traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in one (or more) of the following ways:

(1) recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions. Note: In young children, repetitive play may occur in which themes or aspects of the trauma are expressed.

(2) recurrent distressing dreams of the event. Note: Inchildren, there may be frightening dreams without recognizable content.

(3) acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes, including those that occur on awakening or when intoxicated). Note: In young children, trauma-specific reenactment may occur.

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(4) intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemblean aspect of the traumatic event

(5) physiological reactivity on exposure to internal orexternal cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event

C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

(1) efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma

(2) efforts to avoid activities, places, or people thatarouse recollections of the trauma

(3) inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma

(4) markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities

(5) feeling of detachment or estrangement from others

(6) restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings)

(7) sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span)

D. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma), as indicated by two (or more) of the following:

(1) difficulty falling or staying asleep

(2) irritability or outbursts of anger

(3) difficulty concentrating

(4) hypervigilance

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(5) exaggerated startle response

E. Duration of the disturbance (symptoms in Criteria B, C, and D) is more than 1 month.

F. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

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CURRICULUM VITAE

David M. Reher

Place of birth: Lompoc, CA

EducationB.A. Concordia University—Wisconsin, May 2007

Majors: Secondary English education, Spanish (non-licensable), and Music (non-licensable)

M.A.L.L.T. University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, May 2011

Concentrations: Spanish literature and Medieval literature

Dissertation Title: Winner’s Trauma: Exploring the Consequences of Victory in Ideological Struggles in the Spanish Reconquista, the First Levantine Crusade, and the Albigensian Crusade

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Major Professor #1Date

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Major Professor #2Date

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