DeMarco Patricia A
Lit Med. 2015 Fall;33(2):279-301. doi: 10.1353/lm.2015.0020.
This essay examines scenes of violence in the late medieval poem The Siege of Jerusalem in order to reveal the ways in which trauma is used as the grounds upon which Christian/Jewish difference is established. In particular, I argue that this poem serves as an example of a widespread element in Christian chivalric identity, namely the need to manage the repetitive invocation of Christ's crucifixion (ritually repeated through liturgical and poetic invocation) as a means of asserting both the bodily and psychic integrity of the Christian subject in contrast to the violently abjected figure of the Jewish body. The failure of The Siege protagonist, Wespasian, to navigate the cultural trauma of the crucifixion is contrasted to the successful management of trauma by the martial hero, Tancred, in Tasso's epic, Gerusalemme Liberata, illustrating the range of imaginative possibilities for understanding trauma in pre-modern war literature.
本文审视了中世纪晚期诗歌《耶路撒冷围城记》中的暴力场景，以揭示创伤被用作确立基督教/犹太教差异的依据的方式。具体而言，我认为这首诗是基督教骑士身份中一个普遍元素的例证，即需要处理对基督受难的反复援引（通过礼拜仪式和诗歌援引进行仪式性重复），以此作为维护基督教主体的身体和心理完整性的一种手段，与犹太身体那被暴力排斥的形象形成对比。《耶路撒冷围城记》的主人公韦斯巴芗未能应对受难的文化创伤，这与塔索的史诗《解放耶路撒冷》中军事英雄坦克雷德对创伤的成功处理形成对比，说明了在前现代战争文学中理解创伤的一系列想象可能性。
