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
Introduction: A Kaleidoscope of différance
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
‘What we have not had to decipher, to elucidate by our own efforts, what was clear before we looked at it, is not ours. From ourselves comes only that which we drag forth from the obscurity which lies within us, that which to others is unknown’ (Marcel Proust, v.xii, 241).
The aim of this book is to explore the gendering of desire in the songs of the trouvères, with the accent in particular on feminine desire. It will consider desire as an aspect of register and genre in the light of the Saussurian understanding that signification is established through difference. While this understanding is often acknowledged, it is difficult to follow into practice. Positivity has a way of creeping back; the semantic emptiness of terms on their own – the lack in the Other of language – is a difficult matter to embrace. This project constitutes an attempt to follow seriously the logic of signification as difference. A path from Saussure's Course in General Linguistics could take many directions. I have chosen to read the songs in connection with Lacanian psychoanalytic theory because of the way this theory responds to issues raised in the songs of signification, sexual difference and unconscious desire.
The Trouvères and Desire
Desire and the desiring subject in trouvère song are constituted within a system of generic differentiation. Desire is an effect of the organization of a text's rhetoric, as Simon Gaunt has observed (‘Discourse Desired’).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvère Song , pp. 1 - 22Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007