Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: A Kaleidoscope of différance
- 1 The Song System I
- 2 The Song System II
- 3 Desire by Gender and Genre I
- 4 Desire by Gender and Genre II
- 5 Chronotopes of Desire I
- 6 Chronotopes of Desire II
- 7 Desiring Differently
- Afterthoughts
- Bibliography
- Index
- Already Published
3 - Desire by Gender and Genre I
Low Lusts and High Desires: Pastourelle and Chanson
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: A Kaleidoscope of différance
- 1 The Song System I
- 2 The Song System II
- 3 Desire by Gender and Genre I
- 4 Desire by Gender and Genre II
- 5 Chronotopes of Desire I
- 6 Chronotopes of Desire II
- 7 Desiring Differently
- Afterthoughts
- Bibliography
- Index
- Already Published
Summary
‘The function of the pastourelle is to express physical desire in a pure state, completely free of all codification, ideology and spiritualization because it is addressed to a creature without a soul or considered as such, whose only reason for existing is to be an erotic object’.
(Michel Zink, Pastourelle 117)‘The idealized woman, the Lady [is] in the position of the Other and of the object’ (Jacques Lacan, Ethics 163).
This chapter outlines the operation of desire in the trouvère system, from the point of view of the masculine subject and his objects, in low- and highstyle song. The following chapter attempts the same operation with feminine subjects and masculine objects. The question of terminology is crucial here, but difficult to resolve in a reading which attempts to contemplate desire from two incompatible perspectives: those of the trouvères and of Lacan. Jean-Charles Huchet's schema of desire and jouissance, neatly expressed in the epigram: ‘She whom I enjoy (l'autre femme) is not she whom I desire (la Dame)’ (L'amour 49) works well as an account of what the masculine lovers of chanson say or allow to be inferred. Huchet's configuration does not capture the complexities of feminine desire at any level, however. The dissymmetry of the masculine and feminine positions in relation to desire does not allow either an equivalence in the terms or a reversal of them.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvère Song , pp. 69 - 95Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007