Mise en abyme in Marie de France’s „Laüstic“

Mise en abyme in Marie de F rance’s “ Laüstic“
Susan Small
Mise en abyme, or infinite regress, is a hermeneutic device which produces
meaning through thejuxtaposition of analogaus structures. lts use
is perhaps most prevalent in l i terature, although it has important parallels
in other disciplines, most notably that of visual arts, where replication
draws the eye to the isomorphism and infinite interconnectivity of
spatial configurations. The introduction of the term „mise en abyme“ in a
l i terary context is generally attributed to the late-nineteenth-century
French writer, Andre Gide, who borrowed it from the field of heraldry;
the notion of a „text-within-a-text“ was. said Gide, similar to the relation
which obtained between an object placed at the center point (the
„abyme“) of a heraldic shield and the shield itself; both devices operated
by means of an analogy between one structure and the structure which
contained it.1 Meaning was produced through the interaction (or, more
specifically, m i rroring) of similar structures, each reflecting and thereby
complicating and interrogating the other. Given its focus on specularity,
it would seem inevitable that mise en abyme should emerge, some half a
century later, as the sine qua non of the French Nouveau Roman (New
Novel]. with its focus on metafictional reflexivity. Within the kaleidoscopic
detai l of a text (literary or other), mise en abyme acts both as a filter
and a catalyst, bringing into focus systems of semiotic relations
whose analogaus structures can be seen to reflect, and reflect upon. each
other. lt is in this way that it functions as a hermeneutic device, revealing
intricate webs of symmetric semiosis underlying and supporting the
surface of the text.
Cf. Lucien Oällenbach, „Andre Gide’s shields,“ in Lucien Dallenbach, The Mirror in
the Text, trans. Jeremy Whitely with Emma Hughes (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1989), 7-19, esp. 7-8. Originally Le n1cit sp􀉱culaire: essai sur Ia mise
en abyme (Paris: tditions du Seuil, 1977) ; and Andre Gide, Journal 1 889-1939
(Paris: Gallimard, Pleiade, 1948). 41. cf. Journals 1 889-1949, trans. J. O’Brien
(London: Penguin, 1984). 30-31.
64 SUSAN SMALL
lf the use of the term mise en abyme is modern, however, the concept
itself is not. ln his study of m i rror imagery in medieval and renaissance
texts, Herbert Grabes observes a parallel between simi larity, analogy,
and the classical principle of imitatio, n which the world is conceptualized
throughout the period as an „increasingly complex fabric of analogies,“
each strand of which can be seen and, therefore, interpreted in
terms of the others.2 Within this world of echoes, asymmetry (and the
complementary notions of absence, si lence, d islocation, refraction, erasure
and loss) can be seen as a rent in the „fabric of analogies.“ Moreover,
as Lucien D􀩓llenbach observes in The Mirrar in the Text, the placement of
one object en abyme in another produces a hole or lacuna at the center of
the object in which it is placed, a l tering its identity and initiating “ [a]n
infinite illusion . . . or an u n l i mited interplay of substitutions.“3
This interplay is strikingly represented in the twelfth-century lay of
„Laüstic“ [The Nightingale] by Marie de France, which contains ajeweled
casket which contains an embroidered cloth which contains a dead
nightingale: a structure that clearly replicates Dällenbach’s definition of
mise en abyme as „any internal mirror that reflects the whole of the narrative
by simple, repeated or ’specious‘ (or paradoxical) duplication.“4
Moreover, the collection of lays containing „Laüstic“ itself is preceded by
a prologue i n which Marie famously declares her writing prqject: to follow
the ancient practice of obscuring the meaning of the text in order
that it might be read and interpreted by future generations with the
hermeneutic tools at their disposal:
lt was the custom of the Ancients,
As Priscian testifies
That in the books that they wrote
They would say things quite obscurely
So that those who should come after them
And wish to learn from them
Might gloss the Ietter
And add their own understanding to then.s
Herbert Grabes, The Mutable Gtass: Mirror-imagery in Titles and Texts of the Middle
Ages and English Renaissance, trans. Gordon Collier (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982), 1 1 2-13.
Dallenbach, Mirror, 1 1 1 .
Dällenbach, Mirror, 36.
„Custume fu as ancrens, I Ceo testimoine Precrens, I Es l ivres kejadis feseient, I
Assez oscurement diseient I Pur ceus ki a venir esteient I E ki aprendre I es deveient,
I K’l peussent gloser Ia Ietter I E de I ur sen le surplus mettre“ (Marie de
France, Les Lais de Marie de France, trans. Jean Rychner [Paris: Champion, 1983],
MtSE ENABYMEIN MARI ETHE FRANCE‘ S „LAOSTIC‘ 65
The object of my paper is, therefore, to elucidate the semiotic structure
underlying the lay of „Laüstic“ in terms of the concept of the mise en
abyme. To this end, I will first present a plot summary of „Laüstic,“ followed
by an analysis of its plot structure. I w i l l argue that the lay has a
bi-partite narrative structure: the first part of which is based on the
principle of mi rror-image symmetry, and the second on the related but
more refractory concept of mise en abyme itself.
The story can be summarized as follows: Two knights of equal wealth
and prowess, equally respected by their peers, l i ve in neighboring
houses separated only by a wall. The only apparent d i fference between
the two knights is that one of them is married and one i s not. The unmarried
knight fa lls i n Iove with the wife of the married knight. The two Iovers
engage in an intense, secret platonic Iove affair from their bedroom
windows. One night, the lady’s husband becomes suspicious and asks her
why she has been spend ing so much time at the window. She teils him
that she has been l i stening to the n i ghtingale singing in the garden. The
following day, her husband has the bird trapped and brought to him. He
summons his wife and, telling her that the nightingale will no Ionger
keep her awake, breaks its neck and flings its bloody body at her. Terrified
that her Iover w i l l think she no Ionger loves him, she wraps the
nightingale’s body i n a cloth on which she has embroidered the story of
its tragic death. She gives the body to a messenger, asking h i m to deliver
it to her Iover and to tel I him what has happened. Her Iover, heartbroken,
places the body of the nightingale in the embroidered cloth in ajeweled
casket which he carries with him forever.
l n The Mirrar in the Text, Dällenbach cites the dead nightingale i n
„Laüstic“ a s a classic example of „[t]he paradigms that are used a s metaphors
for the locus of a metaphysical narrative“6; in “ Laüstic,“ he explains,
the remains of the bird that 1s an emblem of Iove poetry are wrapped in an em·
broidered silk shroud covered in writing, and kept like a relic in a case which recalls
other caskets in literature 7
„Prologue,“ II. 1 1 -1 9). All quotations from the Lais will be taken from this edition.
All unattributed English translations w1ll be my own.
Dallenbach, Mirror, 1 80.
Dällenbach, Mirror, 1 8 1-82. Paul Zumthor poses this same question in terms or
the modalities of Greimassian semiotics (A. J. Greimas, Du sens: Essais semiotiques
[Paris: tditions du Seuil, 1 970]. 168): „The existence of three performers (the
Lady, the Lover, and the Husband) and of a single object (Iove) has to be taken
into account; at any given moment the object is substituted by the nightingale in
66 SUSAN SMALL
l n other words, the dead nightingale lies at the bottom of a textual abyss,
a sort of memento scribendi, distilling and „deciphering“ an originary
meta-text.a I w i l l further argue that not only does the dead nightingale
(as object) constitute the locus of a metaphysical narrative but that the
nightingale’s death itself (as act) is the catalyst that converts a pleasing
(if somewhat predictable) Iove story i nto a profound commentary on the
nature of writing and memory. ln structural terms, the highly symmetrical
(if mobile) m i rror structure which characterizes the opening pages
of „Laüstic“ is fractured by the death of the nightingale, which acts as
what one critic terms a „hole in the information-bearing sign system“; its
death is a pivotal moment of disequilibrium, throwing the narrative into
a tailspin and restructuring it as a mise en abyme.s
The story opens with a striking representation of m i rror-image (or
reflection) symmetry: two knights, two houses, two good men.10 Almost
immediately, however, this symmetry is broken down into its component
parts; the two knights become „the one“ and „the other,“11 and a
previously undisclosed third element (the wife of „the one“) is revealed,
effectively transforming the initial m i rror-image symmetry relation into
a classic Iove triangle. The Iady, in other words, functions as a sort of
„dangerous Supplement,“ i ntroducing the possibil ity-the quasi-cervirtue
of equivalences taken from courtly Iove lyric“ (Paul Zumthor, Towards a
Medieval Poetics, trans. Philip Bennett [Minneapolis: University of Minneseta
Press, 1 992], 319). Peter Haidu, who proposes a distinction between the „pure
sign, a sign signifying nothing but signification“ and „the metonymic, contiguous
serious of signs [ … ] that discursively explicate the solitary, polyvalent sign.“ observes
that „(i]n ‚Laustic.‘ the doubled sign structure forms a mise-en-abyme: the
small syntagm that reflects a narrative’s totality.“ The dead bird is, for Haidu, the
„sign of pure Iove.“ the embroidered shroud its „explicatory narrativization“
(Hai du, Suqject Medieval I Modern: Text and Governance in the Middle Ages [Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2004], 1 28-29).
John. J. White, „The Semiotics of the mise-en-abyme, “ in The Motivated Sign:
lconicity in Language and Literature 2, ed. Olga Fischer and Max Nänny (Amsterdam:
John Benjamins, 2000), 34, in reference to Dällenbach, Mirror, 1 81 .
Margaret M . Boland locates the structural center of the collection of lays i n the
tombs of „Yonec,“ flanked by the coffins in „Deus Amans“ and the reliquary in
„Laustic“ (Margaret M. Boland, Architectural Structure in ehe Lais of Marie de
France [New York: Peter Lang, 1 995], 62).
10 „[d]ui chevalier“ (1. 9), „deus forz maisuns“ (1. 10), „Ia bunte des deus baruns“ (1.
1 1 ). The Larousse Dictionnaire de J’ancien fran􀗛ais defines a „maison fort“ as a
„manoir fortifie.“ a fortified dwelling.
1 1 “ The one has married a Iady“ („Li uns aveit femme espusee“ [I. 1 3]); “ The other
was a bachelor“ („Li autres fu uns bachelers“ [1. 1 7] ; my emphasis).
MISE ENABYME IN MARIE THE FRANCE‘ S „LAOSTIC“ 67
tainty-of change. lndeed, we are only twenty-three l i n es into the lay
when Marie reveals that the bachelor knight loves the lady,12 and, only
three lines further on, teils us that the Iady loves him as well.13 The exclusivity
of this „above a l l eise“ implies both the reciprocity of the relationship
between the bachelor knight and the married woman and the concomitant
exclusion of the lady’s husband. Moreover, if we assume (as I
think we must) that Marie’s initial representation of the relationship between
the two knights occulted not only the presence of the Iady but also
the existence of an exclusive and reciprocal erotic (or at least sexual) relationship
between her and her husband, then what has occurred in the
first twenty-three I ines of the lay is a complete, but still symmetrical, reconfiguration
of the original affective mirrar relation.
ln strictly formal terms, the „binary opposition“ between the two actants
is maintained; their function has simply been reassigned. The
bachelor knight is now to the married Iady (and she to him) what her
husband was to her (and she to him) before. Any change in the affective
relationship between the two knights themselves is left unmentioned
and has, in any case, no effect on the formal actantial structure of the lay:
two knights, two houses, two good men. The fact that the reader is i n i t
i a l l y unaware that both knights Iove the same Iady serves only to reinforce
the m i rrar symmetry relation between the two. l nterestingly, too,
Marie takes the proximity of the two knights‘ „two houses“ and reformulates
it as a sort of architectural aphrodisiac: not only do the bachelor
knight and the married woman, she says, fall in Iove with each other „because
he lived close to her,“14 but they are also able to conceal their Iove
from her husband
For their dwellings were close
Their houses were next to each other
As were their rooms and their do‘]jons.15
12 „He loved his neighbour’s wife“ („La femme sun veisin ama“).
13 „She loved him above all eise“ („ele l’ama sur tute rien“).
1• „pur ceo qu’il iert pres de Ii“ (I. 28).
15 „(k]ar pres esteient lur repere: I Preceines furent lur maisuns I E I ur sales e I ur
dunguns“ (II. 34-36). As Judith P. Shoaf notes in her online translation of this passage
(http:/ lwww.clas.ufl.edulusersljshoaf/Mariellaustic.pdf – last accessed
January 8, 2013). „propinquity“ figured in the „art of courtly Iove“ in the twelfth
century: „Lovers who live near tagether can eure each other of the torments that
come from Iove, can help each other in their common sufferings, and can nourish
their Iove by mutual exchanges and efforts“ („Amantes enim ex propinqua degentes
poenarum, quae ex amore procedunt, alternatim sibi possunt esse remedia
et in suis se compassionibus adiuvare et suum amoren mutuis vicibus ac
68 SUSAN SMA.LL
Despite this fortuitous contiguity, however, the first knight now appears
to be entirely absent from the equation. l ndeed, his physical absence
from his own house is given as the occasion for several encounters between
his neighbor and his wife. Of course, in his absence, his function as
what the actantial model of structural semantics would term the „obstacle“
is taken over by the very I itera I wall between the two houses: „There
was no barrier or obstacle I Except a high wall of grey stone.“16 Moreover,
it is at this point in the narrative that even the strict survei llance,
which denotes the presence of the lady’s husband,17 is no obstacle to the
i ntense reciprocity of the relationship between the Iady and the other
knight. There being no possibil ity of physical contact, however, their two
facing bedchambers (with their erotically suggestive open wi ndows) become
the site of an intense exchange of sexual substitutes. The narrative
continues:
From the chamber where the Iady lay,
When she went to the window,
She could ta lk with her Iover
on her part, and he to her,
And they could exchange gifts
laboribus enutrire“ (my emphasis); Andreas Capellanus. The Art of Courtly Love,
trans. John Jay Parry [New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1941], 98-99; Andreas
Capellanus, Oe amore libri tres 1.6.G .. „Loquitur nobilior nobili,“ Para. 359
[http:/ lwww.thelatin library.comlcapellanus.html) last accessed January 8,
2013).
16 „N’i aveit bare ne devise I Fors un haut mur de piere bise“ (II. 37-38); I have highlighted
the word „except“ because it marks, in Old French, not only exception, as
here and several lines later, („They were both very happy I Except. … “ [„Mut
esteient amdui a eise, I Fors … .“ (11. 46-47)]), but exclusion as weil. lt is, moreover,
highly significant in terms of Derridean theory of mourning and the erotic,
which opposes „introjection,“ in which „language acts and makes up for absence
by representi ng, by giving figurative shape to presence,“ and „i ncorporation,“
which „creates a typography within the psyche where the beloved is kept“
(quoted in Martin Kavka, Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 200, 199). See also „Fors,“ Jacques
Derrida’s foreword to Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok’s The Wolf Man’s Magie
Ward: A Cryptonomy (Minneapolis: University of Minneseta Press, 1 986). This
distinction is, as we will see, crucial in the lover’s response to the dead nightingale.
Paul Zumthor designates the function of „fors“ in lines 47-57 of „Laustic“ as
„restriction (fors que, ‚except‘) of previous affirmation, producing retrospective
ambiguity“ (Zumthor, Poetics, 320).
17 „For the Iady was closely guarded I Wnen he [her husband] was in the area“
(„Kar I a dame ert estreit gardee I Quanteil esteit en Ia cuntree“ [II. 49-50)).
MISE ENABYME IN MARIE THE FRANCE‘ S „LAOSTIC“ 69
By tossing them back and forth to each other.18
Of course. it is the lady’s husband, the „sleeping partner“ in this erotic
game, whose occulted presence will eventually tip the balance in favor of
his marriage. For it is he who, in the dark and intimate space of the bedroom
he alone shares with the Iady, begins to invoke the rules of marriage
against those of the game of courtly Iove, demanding that she account
for her absences. becoming angry and asking „why she arose and
where she went.“19 lnterestingly, the husband is, with respect to his
doubts, also playing the role of the courtly Iover himself, for, as Andreas
Capellanus remarks in the chapter of his Art of Courtly Love entitled „Of
the signs of mutual Iove“ the man who notices that his Iover is absent
more often („lf you see that your Iover is missing a l l sorts of opportun i ties
to b e with you“) o r comes up with pretexts for not being with him
(„or is putting false obstacles i n your path“) has good reason to suspect
that she i s i n Iove with another man.20 Moreover, the Iady i n “ Laüstic“
does use what proves to be a highly significant pretext to explain her
nightly absences to her husband („My Iord, the Iady replied, I He has no
joy in this world I Who does not hear the nightingale sing. I lt is for that
reason that I go there“),21 and this, too, is a sign of her desire to leave
him.
l t is, therefore. at this precise point-at the virtual midpoint of the
narrative ( I I . 7-1 56)-that the nightingale begins to function as the ticking
time bomb at the heart of its structure. The device does not immediately
explode nor does the structure implode; the duration of time implicit
in both the inj unction and the narrative („He thought of one thing
only: I He will trap the nightingale“)22 defers the final act and allows for
a final reconfiguration of the spatial Coordinates i nvolved. For, one line
after the nightingale is identified as the husband’s target, the house is
18 „Des chambres u Ia damejut, I Quant a Ia fenestre s’estut, I Poeit parler a sun ami
I De l’autre part. e il a Ii, I E lur aveirs entrechangier I E par geter e par Iancier“
(II. 39-44).
19 „[p]ur quei levot e u ala“ {I. 82).
20 „Sed si coamantem cognoveris se ultra solitum, ut eam non videas. absentare“; „Si
enim videris amantem occasiones in coamantem requirere varias vel falsa
i mpedimenta opponere“ (Andreas Capellanus, Courtly Love. 1 57; Andreas Capellanus,
Oe amore 1 1.5. „Oe notitia mutui amoris,“ 3, 2 [http:/ lwww.thelatinlibrary.
comlcapellanuslcapellanus2.html] last accessed January 8, 201 3).
21 „Sire, Ia dame Ii respunt, I Ii nen adjoie en cest mund I Ki n’ot le laüstic chanter.
I Pur ceo me vois ici ester“ (II. 83-86). 22 „D’une chose se purpensa: I ie laüstic enginnera“ (II. 95-96).
70 SUSAN SMALL
transformed from a dwel l i ng into a center of command and its garden,
once an idyllic locus amoenus („And the garden flowered“)P into a minefield
(„There was not a servant i n the house I Who did not make traps,
snares or nets I And place them throughout the garden“).24 The servants
follow the husband’s orders to take the bird a l ive and deliver it to him,
and suddenly we are back in the lady’s bedroom. The second knight, the
Iover, whom we m ight have expected to be the si lent witness of the scene
that fol lows, is, presumably, no Ionger at his window; he must later be
told what happened. The Iady, too, is once again absent, though no Ionger
at her window, either. lt is up to the husband to set the stage and summon
the final player: „My Iady, he said, where are you? I Come here,
speak to me!“25 Ten I in es later, the bird is dead („And he kil led it out of
spite: I He broke its neck with his two hands“) .2s
I suggested earlier that the point in the narrative at which the husband
breaks the bird’s neck is thejuncture at which the mirror-image
symmetry of the underlying semiotic structure of „Laüstic“ is shattered
and refracted into the d izzying ka Ieidoscape image of the mise en abyme.
Syntagms from the m i rror symmetry structure are reflected in the postapocalyptic
narrative as in a d i stortion or Funhause rear-view mirror.
But, as I noted earlier as weil, it is the point at which the husband recogn
i zes the b i rd as the pretext it is that it a l l begins to fal l apart, and this,
too, is reflected in layers of functional and syntagmatic distortion; the
bedroom with its bedroom window changes from the simple spatial COordinate
marking an architectural symmetry („From the bedroom where
the Iady lay I When to the window she went“)27 at the beginning of the
story to the spot from which the bird as target is First sighted („She went
to be at the w i ndow“)28 and then to the scene of its murder („He came to
the lady’s room“)29; the husband’s „My Iady, he said, where are you?“ (1.
1 05) just prior to the bird’s murder is an eerie echo of his earlier „And
many times he asked her . . . where she went“30 just prior to its identification;
the husband’s i njunction to „Come here, speak to me!“ (1.1 06) is a
23 „E Ii vergier ierent fluri“ (I. 59).
24 „II n’ot val let en sa meisun I Ne face engin, reis u la<;un, I Puis les mettent par le
vergier“ (II. 95-97).
25 „Dame, fet-il, u estes vus? I Venez avant, parlez a nus!“ (II. 1 05-06).
26 „E il l’ocist par engreste: I Le co l li rumpt a sesdeus meins“ (11. 1 14-15).
27 „Des chambres u Ia damejut I Quant a Ia fenestre s’estut“ (II. 39-40).
28 „A Ia fenestre ester veneit“ (I. 7 3).
29 „As chambres a Ia dame vint“ (I. 104).
30 „Et meintefeiz Ii demanda . . . u ala“ (I I. 8″;-82).
MISE ENABYME IN MARI ETHE FRANCE‘ S „LAOSTIC“ 7 1
perversion of the uninhibited Iove talk between the Iady and the other
knight: „But their one consolation was that I Be it night or day I They
could speak to each other.“31 The corruption in the communication system
is not at this point complete, however; for if the conversations between
the Iady and her Iover are intimate exchanges. the husband’s
questions to the Iady, as intrusive as they might be, do not remain unanswered.
lt is only when the Iady asks her husband to give the nightingale
to her that the break is complete, for when the husband, in response,
kills the bird and fl ings its broken body at her („He threw the body at his
wife“),32 he is staging a bloody, one-sided re-enactment of the gift exchange
between his wife and the other man („And they could exchange
gifts I By tossing them back and forth to each other“).33 The resulting
bloodstain on the lady’s dress marks, as weil, the shift from a l i nguistic to
a brutally graphic code of communication.
The death of the n ightingale marks as weil the beginning of a very lit·
eral mise en abyme, a fall into the abyss. The clarity of the mirror-image
system of relationships which operated within the lay up to the point at
which the Iady revealed the bird’s presence has been smeared and then
shattered. The song of the nightingale. the Iove talk, and even the threats
31 „Mes de tant aveient retur, I U fust par nuit u fust par jur, I Qu’ensemble poeient
parler“ (II. 51-53).
32 „Sur Ia dame le cors geta“ (I. 1 1 6; my emphasis).
33 „E lur aveirs entrechangier I E par geter e par Iancier“ (II. 43-44; my emphasis).
The French edition of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which devotes two pages
to the nightingale, uses the verb „lancer“ (‚he throws it“ [„le lance“]), to describe
the way in which the nightingale emits its sang (Piine L’Ancien. Histoire naturelle.
Livre X. para 43, sec 82, ed. E. de Saint Denis [Paris: Les Beiles Lettres, 1961 ). 57).
ln French slang, the verb lancer (to throw) is a synonym for 􀗜aculer (to ejaculate),
the noun lance (lance) for „penis.“ rompre une lance (to break a lance)
means „to have sex,“ as do manier, manipuler and etre aux mains (all derived
from main [hand]) (see Pierre Giraud, Dictionnaire erotique [Paris: Payot, 1978)).
The nightingale of course has, since its appearance in classical Latin literature,
been a metaphor for the penis. See Madeleine Jeay, „La cruaut􀌽 de Philom􀚈le: M􀇖tamorphoses
medievales du mythe ovidien,“ in Violence et fictionjusqu’lJ Ia revolution,
ed. Martine Debaisieux and Gabrielle Verdier (Tübingen: Gunter Narr
Verlag. 1998), 1 1 1-20, esp. 1 1 5. See, for example, Giovanni Boccaccio, II
Oecameron, Giornata Quinta, Novella Quarta (Bari: Laterza, 1 927), 370. lf the Iady
and the other man in „Laüstic“ were engaging i n deep erotic play through the intermediary
of the nightingale in the garden, the husband, by breaking its neck
with his two hands. is not only stopping their game but also playing a solitary
sexual game of his own.
7 2 SUSAN SMA.L
(„lt [the nightingale] w i l l keep you awake no more“)34 have been silenced.
The houses and gardens have shrunken to the space of a single
room. The once l u m i nous symmetry lies in ruins; the husband has
walked out, the Iover is nowhere to be seen and the Iady is alone in her
bedchamber with a dead bird. However radiant the storyline, it would
seem that it has now come to an end.
And yet, this is not the end of the story, for, as Peter Haidu observes,
„Marie’s semiosis juxtaposes the dynamics of l i the narrative l i nearity
with the radiating stasis of symbol ism.“JS The Iady may be alone in her
bedchamber with a dead bird, but that bird is a potent symbol of Iove,
sex and poetry, and she knows it. Like the violated and voiceless Philomena,
she writes down her story and sends it by way of a messenger to
the one person she is desperate to reach. Unlike Philomena (who, after a
final, horrific encounter with her violator, escapes by turning into a
nightingale herself), the Iady in „Laüstic“ has the solution near at hand:
“1’11 send him the nightingale,“ she decides; “1’11 send him the story.“36 l n
so doing, she escapes the spiral vortex of despair she was pul led into by
the death of the bird. She is sti II with her husband, of course; on a surface
Ievei. the institutions which have, from the beginning, governed the relationships
in the lay remain in place. The Iove affa ir between the Iady and
the bachelor knight has not-has not ever-replaced her marriage; the
pull of the abyss has turned its worm-eaten corpse inside out and exposed
it for what it is, but it is not dead The mangled body of the bird i s
the last of the gifts she can send t o her Iover: one last, vicarious and solitary
fling. So she d resses the body of the b i rd as carefully as if it were a
dead bride, wrapped i n a fine gown embroidered with the story of its
demise („ln a piece of brocade I Embroidered with words of gold I She
wrapped the little bird“).37
lt is in this move from orality to the written word that the Iady, I
would suggest, most closely resembles Marie de France herself, writing
down the stories she had heard, collecting them, and sending them like
flowers to her Iord so that she (and they) might not be forgotten. Marie,
who, as she explains in the prologue to her collection of lays, was herself
i m itating the Ancients,
3< „Ii ne vus esveillerat meis“ (1. 1 1 0).
35 Haidu, Suqject, 125.
36 „Le laüstic Ii trametrai“ (1. 1 33); „L’aventure Ii manderai“ (1. 134).
37 „En une piece de samit I A or brusde e tut escrit I Ad J’oiselet envolupe“ (II. 135-
37).
MISE ENABYME IN MARI E THE FRANCE‘ S „LAOSTI(‚
Who, to be remembered, made them [lays]
About the stories they had heard,
Who were the fi rst to write them down
And send them out i nto the worJd .le
73
lt is also this moment which transforms the nightingale from a songbird
into a Iibretto, a pretext into a text; this is the relation between symbol
and „expl icatory narrativization“ in its purest form.39 That is not to say
however, that the function of orality is completely d isplaced at this point
in the lay (nor at this point in twelfth-century I i terature in general ) ; the
Iady takes the notion of „text-within-a-text“ l i tera lly, not only wrapping
the „bird as text“ inside the „shroud as text“ but also repeating the story
to a messenger along with the message to repeat it to the other man. Jakobsonian
message theory avant Ia lettre! The lady’s message is, of
course, received. Moreover, its receiver, in a mise en abyme of his own,
replicates the „text-within-a-text“ structure of the message by sea l i n g the
bird text in the shroud text within what we might (albeit anachronistically)
term a „Chinese box,“ itself the qui ntessential structural metaphor
for mise en abyme:
He had a little casket made
Neither of i ron nor of steel
But entirely made ofvery rare and very expensive
Fine gold and precious stones;
The cover was carefully fitted.
He put the nightingale inside.40
For Däl lenbach, as we have seen, the figure [B] placed en abyme at the
centre of a heraldic shield [A]
produces a lacuna within the identity of A, which is partially lost ( i n the abyss)
through the shield that is added to it-in other words, the addition of B in fact
subtracts from it.41
John H. White argues, however, that this lacuna, which he describes as
„the equivalent of a hole in the i nformation-bearing sign system,“ is nonfunctional
in I iterary uses of mise en abyme 42 I would suggest, however,
that i n the case of “ Laüstic,“ it is the semiotic value of the i nformation
38 „Ke pur remambrance !es firent I Des aventures k‘ i l o’frent I Ci! ki primes !es
comencierent I E ki avant !es enveierent“ (II. 35-38).
39 See above, note 6.
40 „Un vaisselet ad fet forgier; I Unques n’i ot fer ne acier, I Tuz fu d’or fin od bones
pieres, I Mut prec’feuses e mut chieres; I Covere i e i ot tres bien assis. I Le laüstic
ad dedenz mis“ (II. 149-54 ).
41 Oällenbach, Mirror, 1 1 1 .
42 White, „Semiotics,“ 34.
7 4 SUSAN SMALL
produced by 87 (the dead bird) and 82 (the shroud in which it is presumably
still wrapped) that is compromised (or at least altered) by that
of the casket [A] in which they are placed. For the narrative ends with
the seal ing of the casket and the mise en place of one final piece of i nformation:
„Then he had the casket sealed. I He carried it with him forever
after.“43 Questions of supplementarity and h ierarchisation aside, the
function of a sealed casket is to conceal what lies within, to disguise the
ravages of time, loss and degradation. Moreover, there being no lock,
there is no key to any hermeneutic code the casket might conta in. All is
sealed; a l l is surface.
Of course, if we consider the casket itself is a metaphor for the text,
the jewels which stud that surface can be read in terms of a classical
rhetoric which classified tropes as ornamentation, a „dress [that] adorns
the body“ rather than the (now decomposed) body of the text itself44 lt
is the Iover, I would suggest, who now “ incorporates“ the body of the
dead n i ghtingale as a final, sol itary act of sexual Substitution; for the Derridean
psyche in mourning does i ndeed create
a fantastic mechanism that resurrects the lost beloved within itself in order to
hold on to the inti macy which the psyche cannot, for various reasons. Iet go.45
Dällenbach’s claim that the body of the nightingale is the locus of a metaphor
for an originary metaphysical text must, I believe, be modulated by
the corollary that that locus l i es forever at the bottom of an abyss, in a
dark and solitary place of i rremed iable emptiness and irreparable loss.
43 „Puis fist Ia chasse enseeler. I Tuzjurs l’ad fete od lui porter“ (II. 1 5 5-56).
44 Doreen l nnes. „Metapher, S i m i l e, and Allegory as Ornaments of Style, “ in Metapher,
Allegory, and the Classical Tradition: Ancient Thought and Modern Revisions,
ed. G.R Boys-Stones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 7.
45 Kavka, Messianism, 199.
Obscurity in Medieval Texts
MEDIUM AEVUM QUOTIDIANUM
SONDERBAND XXX
Obscurity in Medieval Texts
edited by
Lucie Dolezalova, Jeff Rider,
and Alessandro Zironi
Krems 2013
Reviewed by
Tamas Visi
and Myriam White-Le Goff
Cover designed by Petr Dolezal with the use of a photo of the interior of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (photo Lucie Dolezalova)
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WITHIN THE RESEARCH PROJECT
„INTERPRETING AND APPROPRIATING ÜBSCURITY
IN MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPT CULTURE“
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Acknowledgements
List of Figures
T able of Contents
Textual Obscurity in the Middle Ages (lntroduction)
Lucie Dole2alov􀭟. Jeff Rider. and Alessandro Zironi
„Ciarifications“ of Obscurity:
Conditions for Proclus’s Allegorical Reading of Plato’s Parmenides 1 5
Florin George Cäl ian
Lucifica nigris tune nuntio regna figuris. Po!!tique textuelle de I‘ obscuritas
dans I es recueils d‘!!nigmes latines du Haut moyen Age (V He-V I I I • s.) 3 2
Christiane Veyrard-Cosme
The Enigmatic Style in Twelfth-Century French Literature 49
Jeff Rider
Mise en abyme in Marie de France’s „Laüstic“ 63
Susan Small
Perturbations of the Soul: Alexander of Ashby and Aegidius of Paris an
Understanding Biblical Obscuritas 75
Greti Dinkova-Bruun
Versus obscuri nella poesia didascalica grammatocale del X I I I sec. 87
Carla Piccone
Disclosing Secrets: Vorgil on Middle High German Poems 1 1 0
Alessandro Zironi
Obscuritas tegum: Traditional Law. Learned Jurisprudence, and Territorial
Legislation (The Example of Sachsenspiegel and fus Municipale Maideburgense) 124
Hiram Kümper
Ta Be Born (Aga in) from God:
Scriptural Obscurity as a Theological Way Out for Cornelius Agrippa 1 45
Noel Putnik
Obscuritas in Medoeval and Humanist Translation Theories 157
R!!ka Forrai
The Darkness Within:
First-person Speakers and the Unrepresentable 1 72
Päivi M. Mehtonen
Contributors 1 90
Index nominum 1 94
Index rerum 197
Acknowledgements
This volume grew out of a conference held in Prague in October 6-8. 201 1 .
The conference and the book were supported by a post-doctoral research
grant from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, “ l nterpreting and
Appropriating Obscurity i n Medieval Manuscript Culture“ no. P405/1 0/
P1 1 2 undertaken at the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University in Prague,
by The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports through l nstitutional
Support for Longterm Development of Research Organizations to the
Faculty of Humanities of the same university (PRVOUK 1 8 and UNCE
204002), and by the European Research Council under the European
Community’s Seventh Framewerk Programme ( FPJ/2007-2013) I ERC
grant agreement No. 263672. We are much grateful to these i nstitutions.
Further thanks goes to the individual contributors to this volume who have
been very quick and patient during the process, as weil as to Petr Dolezal
for the cover design and Adela Novakova for the index.
List of Figures
Figure 1 : Scene from one of the Saxon Mirror’s codices picturati (Wolfenbuttel, HerzogAugust-
Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 3.1 . Aug. 2°, fol. 34r).
Figure 2: Index for a manuscript of the Richtsteig Landrecht (Göttweig, Sti ftsbibliothek,
Cod. 364rot, fol. 526r).
Figure 3: Printed text of a Saxon Mirror with Gloss (Christi an Zobel, Leipzig, 1 569).
Figure 4: A remissorium from a Saxon Mirror edited tn 1536 by Chistoph Zobel (Leipzig).
Figure 5: Editorial report for a Saxon Mirror pri nted in 1545 by Nikolaus Wolrab
(Leipzig).
Figure 6: Sebastian Stelbagius, Epitome sive summa universae doctrinae iusticiae legalis
(Bautzen, 1 564 ).
Figures 7 and 8: Melchior Kling, Das Gantze Sechsisch Landrecht mit Text und Gloß in eine
richtige Ordnung gebracht (Leipzig 1 572).