This book offers analyses of texts from medieval France influenced by Ovid’s myth of Narcissus including the Lay of Narcissus, Alain de Lille’s Plaint of Nature, René d’Anjou’s Love-Smitten Heart, Chrétien de Troyes’s Story of the Grail and Guillaume...
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This book offers analyses of texts from medieval France influenced by Ovid’s myth of Narcissus including the Lay of Narcissus, Alain de Lille’s Plaint of Nature, René d’Anjou’s Love-Smitten Heart, Chrétien de Troyes’s Story of the Grail and Guillaume de Machaut’s Fountain of Love. Together, these texts form a corpus exploring human selfhood as wounded and undone by desire. Emerging in the twelfth century in Western Europe, this discourse of the wounded self has survived with ever-increasing importance, informing contemporary methods of theoretical inquiry into mourning, melancholy, trauma and testimony. Taking its cue from the moment Narcissus bruises himself upon learning he cannot receive the love he wants from his reflection, this book argues that the construct of the wounded self emphasizes fantasy over reality, and that only through the world of the imagination—of literature itself—can our narcissistic injuries seemingly be healed and desire fulfilled.
I. Narcissism and Selfhood in Context; ; 1. Introduction: Narcissus and the Wounded Self; 1.1 Selfhood and the Myth of Narcissus; 1.2 Selfhood and Wounding; 1.3 Overview of this Book; ; 2. Narcissus and Selfhood: The Lay of Narcissus; 2.1 The Image of the Self: Vision and Truth (Veoir and Voir); 2.2 Wounding Images: Within and Without (Dedenz and Dehors); 2.3 Seeing the Self: Je me plaing ("I lament myself"); 2.4 Postscript: The Impossibility of V(e)oir; ; II. Selfhood and the Open Wound; ; 3. Narcissus and Mourning: Alain de Lille’s Plaint of Nature; 3.1 Narcissus Mourned: The Wounding of Language; 3.2 Narcissus in Mourning: Nature as Wounded; 3.3 Mourning (Un)Done: The (Im)Possibility of Closure; ; 4. Narcissus and Melancholy: René d’Anjou’s Book of the Love-Smitten Heart; 4.1 The Heart of Melancholy; 4.2 Melancholy at the Fountain; 4.3 Melancholy at the Mirror; ; III. The Wounded Self as Witness; ; 5. Narcissus and Trauma: Chrétien de Troyes’s Story of the Grail; 5.1 The Wound and Knowledge (Navrez and Nel Savez); 5.2 Blancheflor’s Mirror: Agape and the Courtly Lady; 5.3 Perceval and the Grail: The Failure of Witnessing; 5.4 Blood on Snow: The Gaze of the Other; 5.5 Blood and the Cross (Seignier): The Trauma of Salvation; ; 6. Narcissus and Testimony: Guillaume de Machaut’s Fountain of Love; 6.1 Vision and Speech (Mire and Dire): The Echo of Testimony; 6.2 The Testimony of Martyrdom; 6.3 Mute Witness: Testimony at the Fountain; 6.4 Echo’s Response: The Joy of Narcosis; ; 7. Epilogue: Between Je me plaing and Iste ego sum;
