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
2 - The Song System II
The Ignoble Words of Eve: Femininity in the System
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
‘So that the soul may come into being, woman is differentiated from it right from the beginning. She is called woman (on la dit-femme) and defamed (diffâme) (Lacan, Encore 85).
‘[T]he woman becomes, or is produced, precisely as what [the man] is not’ (Lacan, qtd in Introduction II, Mitchell and Rose 49).
This chapter explores the constitution of textual ‘women’ as speaking subjects in the system, and the registral and generic implications of their femininity. It is a necessary step towards a consideration of feminine desire. The exploration takes place mainly in the work of ancient and medieval theoreticians, but their understandings of femininity are brought into dialogue with the understandings of twentieth-century structuralist, psychoanalytic and, to a lesser extent, feminist theory.
In trouvère song, the posing of sexual difference as an opposition is taken up as a way of providing contrast. Matilda Bruckner observes:
[C]ultures – like that of the medieval courtly world – ‘coopt’ [women's songs] and use the persona of the female voice as a contrast, the voice of the other inscribed within its own polyphonic system. The dominant male voice responds to its complement, the female voice, and recognizes itself by the difference (‘Fictions’ 872).
I suggest that this recognition of oneself is brought about by the meaning effect produced when difference is posed as opposition. In fact it is more than recognition, which suggests some pre-existing substance to be recognized.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvère Song , pp. 42 - 68Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007