Ogier

Chanson de geste hero. Ogier the Dane is one of the 12 peers in chansons de geste associated with Charlemagne; he has a major role, for example, in Renaut de Montauban, figuring as the cousin of the rebel baron Renaut. He is the chief protagonist of a long, early-13th-c. chanson de geste by Raimbaut de Paris, La Chevallerie Ogier. Here, in a plot closely modelled on Renaut de Montauban, Ogier's son is killed in a quarrel at Charlemagne's court by Charlemagne's own son, and when the king refuses to punish the killer, Ogier is driven into a career of exile and revolt. He and Charles are finally reconciled through the intermediacy of Turpin, when Ogier's help is needed to save France. The poem, which is manifestly a reworking of earlier material (a lost Chanson d'Ogier de Danemarche?), is somewhat uneven in quality but contains some magnificent scenes. Another surviving poem which takes Ogier as its hero is also a remaniement, by Adenet le Roi; known as the Enfances Ogier, it retells in 10, 000 lines the early part of Ogier's career. Ogier was one of the heroes who attracted the 14th-c. writer Jean d'Outremeuse, who devoted to him a substantial part of his Myreur des histors, a text which recasts as prose ‘history’ the narratives of earlier chansons de geste. The epic hero Ogier is thought to be the legendary transformation of a historical figure, buried at Meaux and revered there as a saint.

[Sarah Kay]