These characters possess freewill, such as Ganelon and his plotting against the Franks. But the God in the epic does intervene to make sure that good really comes out victorious in the end, such as when he makes Thierry win over Pinable in a duel.

The unknown author of the epic presents the Muslims as unquestionably and inherently evil and base, the reverse of the Christians (Bouneuf 2005). Although the Muslims are more monotheistic than Christians and that Christians of the early Middle Ages took Islam merely as another form of paganism, they assumed that Muslims worshipped Apollo. In making this presentation, the poem employs a technique of opposite images, such as 12 Saracen peers matching 12 Frankish peers in battle, opposing armies organizing themselves in the same form, but with Christians outperforming the Muslims and fighting more nobly.

Awesome medieval Christian heroism centers on the idea of vassalage (Bouneuf...
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