Reticent romans : silence and writing in La Vie de Saint Alexis, Le Conte du Graal, and Le Roman de Silence [PhD Diss.]

251 Pages·2003·2.07 MB·English

by  Evan J. Bibbee

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
© Copyright 2003
Evan J. Bibbee
All rights reserved
ii
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?
iii
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.
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Table of Contents
Epigraph.....................................................................................................................iii
Acknowledgments.....................................................................................................iv
Abstract......................................................................................................................vii
Introduction.................................................................................................................1
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
Conclusion................................................................................................................223
Bibliography............................................................................................................228
v
Appendix: Medieval Illustration...........................................................................242
Vita............................................................................................................................243
vi
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.
vii
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.
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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 page3; 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
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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
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