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RETICENT ROMANS:

SILENCE AND WRITING IN

LA VIE DE SAINT ALEXIS, LE CONTE DU GRAAL,

AND LE ROMAN DE SILENCE

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the

Louisiana State University and

Agricultural and Mechanical College

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

The Department of French Studies

by

Evan J. Bibbee

B.A., Albion College, 1992

M.A., Louisiana State University, 1998

August, 2003

ii

© Copyright 2003

Evan J. Bibbee

All rights reserved

iii

Epigraph

For if when I speak I am unable to make myself intelligible, then I am not speaking - even though I were to talk uninterruptedly day and night. - Søren Kirkegaard, Fear and Trembling Silence itself is defined in relationship to words, as the pause in music receives its meaning from the group of notes around it. This silence is a moment of language; being silent is not being dumb; it is to refuse to speak, and therefore to keep on speaking. - Jean-Paul Sartre, What is Literature? iv

Acknowledgments

Words are not enough... Still, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Katharine Jensen, Dr. Gregory Stone, Dr. Kevin Bongiorni, Dr. David Smith, and Dr. Alexandre Leupin. As committee members, they exhibited a genuine interest in my topic and had the patience to see it come to its fruition. As always, a very special thank-you goes to my director, Dr. Leupin, whose inspired teachings first sparked my interest in medieval literature. Dr. Jensen and Dr. Stone have also made enormous contributions to both my intellectual and professional development. I would also like to thank several wonderful friends and colleagues, each of whom I feel has somehow contributed to my success: Ruth Gaertner, Carla Criner, Ricky Rees, and Connie Simpson. Finally, it would be unthinkable to not recognize the endless patience, unfailing encouragement, and beautiful smile of my wife, Claire. v

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Silence in the Middle Ages..............................................................17

Religious Silence and the Ineffable God...............................................................18

Silence Incarnate.....................................................................................................20

Of Silence and Signs...............................................................................................26

Monastic Silence and Desire..................................................................................28

Literature and Rhetoric: Silence of the Subject....................................................31

Chapter Two: Silence and Sainthood in La Vie de Saint Alexis..........................35

Poetry and Parentage.............................................................................................37

Refusal and Reticence.............................................................................................43

Sacrifice, Silence, and the Self................................................................................50

Writing and the Will...............................................................................................60

Chapter Three: Silence and Sin in Le Conte du Graal (Perceval)........................70

Structure, Semence and Sen.....................................................................................74

Perceval: The Silent Knight....................................................................................86

The dist, ensaignement, and the Law......................................................................96

Silence, God, and the Mer(e)................................................................................111

Chapter Four: Silence and semence in Le Conte du Graal (Gawain).................119

Shields and Silence...............................................................................................122

Silent Progress and the Law................................................................................134

Healing Old Wounds...........................................................................................142

The oltre and the Great dela..................................................................................156

Marvelous Metaphors..........................................................................................162

Chapter Five: Being Silent and Silent Being in Le Roman de Silence...............174

Romance and Truth..............................................................................................176

The Politics of Signification.................................................................................181

Law and Loss........................................................................................................191

Desire and the Silent Other..................................................................................196

Nature's Nurturing, Nurture's (de)Naturing....................................................204

That Which is Not There......................................................................................211

The Silent Truth....................................................................................................216

vi

Appendix: Medieval Illustration...........................................................................242

vii

Abstract

Apart from discourse and yet somehow part of it, silence is a powerfully ambiguous linguistic phenomenon that blurs the lines between presence and absence. Eluding the material aspects of oral and written language, it is only perceptible as the gaps or spaces between words. Nonetheless, it plays a role in all linguistic productions: although silence itself cannot be directly communicated, it can influence communication. In a literary text, silence may takes on many different guises, including rhythmic hesitations, rhetorical omissions, and poetic oppositions that mimic the audible gaps of spoken language. The visual, aural, and fictional interaction of all these components ultimately induces otherwise unnamed meanings, meanings that exist as part of the symbolic network of a text, yet beyond the division and difference of signifiers. And while traces of this phenomenon may be found in literature from all historical periods and genres, the three medieval romances in which I have chosen to explore it - La Vie de Saint Alexis, Le Conte du Graal, and Le Roman de Silence - exhibit a particularly strong awareness of the communicative problems and possibilities engendered by silence. Each one demonstrates - albeit in a slightly different way - that silence is more than just omission: within their pages, it becomes an elusive yet create force that shapes thematic development and structures poetics. Ultimately, however, silence's structuralizing force is not just textual, but also ontological, affecting our existence and perceptions of who we are. 1

Introduction

For what is the presence of silence but the absence of sound? - Saint Augustine, Confessions Apart from speech and yet somehow part of it, silence is a powerfully ambiguous linguistic phenomenon that blurs the lines between presence and absence. Indeed, its problematic discursive status has made it an important source of intellectual reflection for a great many disciplines, including psychoanalysis, philosophy and, more recently, literary criticism. Both Lacan's theory of the unconscious and Heidegger's philosophy of Being, for example, accord a privileged discursive role to silence. 1

Even linguistics, a field

traditionally concerned almost uniquely with the scrutiny of substantive signifiers, has come to recognize its communicative potential, finding in the pauses and hesitations of our speech not just a lack of words, but a meaningful linguistic act "that communicates just as intensely as anything we might verbalize." 2 Ultimately, each of these disciplines assigns different linguistic functions and signifying abilities to silence within its particular theoretical framework. Nonetheless, there is a common sentiment that the space between words - this absence of sound - is also something more than nothing. For while it 1 In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the unconscious (also femininity, the Real) is beyond language, a tacit domain within the speaking subject that can be intimated, but never directly stated, through language. Further information can be found in almost any of Lacan's texts. For a general view, see Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977). Silence, especially in the form of a refusal to speak - reticence - is, for Heidegger, the fundamental space in discourse where understanding occurs, where Da-sein is articulated. See, for instance, Martin Heidegger, Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: SUNY Press,

1996) 150-156 as well as On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (San Francisco: Harper

Collins, 1982) 111-138. Both of these theoretical perspectives are discussed below. 2 Joseph A. Devito, "Silence and Paralanguage as Communication,"Etc.; A Review of General

Semantics 46:2 (1989) 153.

2 only becomes manifest in the gaps between phonemes, syllables, words, and sentences, this same lack of form - its nothingness - is what constitutes its representational force. Silence is thus without form, but not without function. Eluding the material aspect of language, it is only perceptible to human ears as the gaps or spaces between words. Nonetheless, it plays a role in all linguistic productions. This is perhaps more easily understood in regards to oral expression than to a written document, but the underlying mechanism is really the same. After all, a text is more than just a benign collection of words on a page 3 ; it is also a self- enclosed symbolic network binding together a unique collection of written characters, rhythmic hesitations, rhetorical omissions, and poetic oppositions that mimic the audible gaps of spoken language. 4

The visual, aural, and thematic

interaction of all these components ultimately induces, or "conditions" otherwise unnamed meanings that exist as part of the written text, yet beyond the division and difference of signifiers. 5 Though physically absent, silence would thus be present in language as part of what Jacques Lacan calls "an encounter with the real." 6

To better grasp

3 While this appraisal would be applicable to texts from all literary periods, it is particularly relevant in the case of medieval manuscripts: because the vellum used for textual composition was often recycled, a palimpest of shadowy words and images from past tales sometimes appears behind the newer text. 4 Cf. Muriel Saville-Troike, "The Place of Silence in an Integrated Theory of Communication," Perspectives on Silence, ed. Deborah Tannen and Muriel Saville-Troike (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex,

1985) 5. According to Saville-Troike, one of the more common examples of written silence is the

punctuation marker '...' frequently used in both Japanese and European literature. 5 Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser, introduction, Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of Negativity in Literature and Literary Theory, ed. Sanford Budik and Wolfgang Iser (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1989) xii.

6 Jacques Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, trans. Alan Sheridan, ed. Jacques- Alain Miller (New York: Norton, 1978) 52. Central to Lacan's theory, the Real (it is capitalized in many English translation in order to draw attention to its importance) is explained here in 3 the sense of this encounter, it will be helpful to follow Lacan's own example by first returning to Freud, and an appropriate choice for such a return is The

Interpretation of Dreams (Dei Traumdeutung).

7

First published in 1900, this lengthy

study of the psychological mechanisms influencing the formation, analysis, and significance of our dreams has, with time, become one of his most widely recognized and most important works. 8

At its core is a method of interpretation

that emphasizes the contextuality of representation - the unique weaving (Latin contexere) of images, gestures, and events within each dream. Of course, Freud was not the first person with an interest in the deeper significance of human reverie, but he does take deliberate pains to set his approach apart from previous ones, which he deems either too specific or not broad enough. 9 The first of these two methods is of the same sort used in many Biblical prophecies, where all the events in a particular dream are interpreted as symbolic yet analogous representations of some future occurrence. Freud's own example is Joseph's explanation of Pharaoh's dream in the forty-first book of

Genesis:

Aristotelian terms, where automaton is the "network of signifiers" and tuché that which exists beyond this network. 7 Beginning in the 1950s, Lacan describe his intellectual journey as a return to Freud (retour à Freud), whose ideas he would continue to examine, criticize, and refine over the remainder of his career. 8 In his introduction to the English translation of The Interpretation of Dreams, James Strachey notes that the renown of this study came long after its initial publication, with sales of only 351

copies during the first six years following its release. In spite of this, "The Interpretation of Dreams

was always regarded by Freud as his most important work: 'Insight such as this' as he wrote in

his preface to the third English edition, 'falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime.'" James Strachey,

introduction, The Interpretation of Dreams (First Part), by Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols. (London:

Hogarth Press, 1953) 4: xx.

9 Freud provides a summary of these in the first chapter. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (First Part), trans. James Strachey, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1953) 4: 1-95. The interpretation in question is deliverd in Genesis 41:31 4 The seven fat kine followed by seven lean kine that ate up the fat kine - all this was a symbolic substitute for a prophecy of seven years of famine in the land of Egypt which should consume all that was brought forth in the seven years of plenty. 10 The problem with this approach, he claims, is that it is not really a method at all, since it depends not on deliberate examination of the dream content, but on the fabrication of a plausible link between the dream and some real-world situation. In such a case, successful interpretation requires no more than "hitting on a clever idea."quotesdbs_dbs46.pdfusesText_46

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