Portrait of the Knight As a Lord of the Animals. Hunting and Livestock- Farming Skills in La Chevalerie Ogier

There is a tight connection in European Medieval literature between the knight and the animals, as it has been proved for Germanic and Scandinavian epic literatures. However, whereas those traditions abound with warriors endowed with an animal identity, in French epic literature the connection between the knight and the animal is rather one of opposition and dominance. This kind of relationship emerges in particular in the passion of knights for hunting. For what concerns the hunting, several studies have been conducted on the ritual and symbolic link between fighting and hunting, but no specific work, as far as I know, has been done on the occasions in which farming skills or husbandry knowledge is attributed to the epic knight. The originality of my approach lies in considering both skills together, as facets of one folkloric model, that of the “lord of the animals”. The issue at stake in my paper is to determine if the farming and hunting skills are essential for the building of the image of the knight the chansons de geste want to convey, and how to interpret this fact. In order to find it out, I shall consider the example of one chanson de geste hero, Ogier de Danemarche, who is portrayed as owner of both hunting and farming skills.