Space in the Brut or Laȝamon’s Vision of the World
Résumé
Space in Laȝamon's Brut is highly symbolical. The sea is the most ambiguous place being both a symbol of rebirth and one of death. Rivers also stand for death. When the name of a stream is mentioned, the reader immediately knows that the Britons' enemies are doomed. Forests and woods play, globally, the opposite role to that of rivers. It is the place of all retreats. In the Brut, paradoxically, open spaces protect better than anything that is enclosed or fortified. Encirclement is the poet's favourite figure to symbolize Man's destiny: human beings are trapped. Man's existence means nothing but solitary confinement, with the Devil as gaoler, but the Saviour has come to pull down the gates of this enclosed world. Good and Evil, God and the devil are then also evoked thanks to the traditional antithesis of the above and the below. Mountains and hills stand for the soaring, the ascent of the righteous to Heaven after their death. Valleys and chasms symbolize the universe of Evil.