Saracens are often described in medieval texts as cannibalistic giants. In some narratives this is subtle, such as the Torrent of Portyngale, where the giants are not named as Saracens but their identity is implied. In this story, the hero seamlessly "moves from killing giants to killing Saracens." The oppositions presented in Portyngale are fundamentally religious, creating a link among all of the non-Christian creatures the Christian knight encounters. Medieval romances present "a succession of defining cultural encounters where notions of the civilized and the bestial, the innocent and the guilty, the monstrous and the manly are brought face to face."

QUESTION: How did this rhetorical conflation of religious and ethnic others function politically in crusade-era Europe?

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 181