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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2003 Reticent romans: silence and writing in La Vie de Saint Alexis, Le Conte du Graal, and Le Roman de Silence Evan J. Bibbee Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Bibbee, Evan J., "Reticent romans: silence and writing in La Vie de Saint Alexis, Le Conte du Graal, and Le Roman de Silence" (2003). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3768. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3768 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. 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. iv 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

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