Intro to my Master's Thesis

Courtly Lady or Lady Errant

Part of the adventure of the Courtly Romances of Chrétien de Troyes are the challenges presented by the women who permeate the genre. The trope of the Lady bestowing a quest upon the Knight—a quest he must complete in order to win her favor and his own honor—pervades the genre and is perhaps one of the most recognizable traits of the Courtly Romance. However, just as the Lady has held sway over her Knight and Lover, so too has she held sway over the minds of critics and readers; her undeniable power over the Knight and her ability to drive the story has made her a literary force with which to be reckoned. Unfortunately, one reaction to this literary omnipresence has been to diminish the Courtly Lady to just about anything but what she is—a woman trying to successfully navigate the expectations of the outer world of the Courtly Romance with her own inner identity as the subject of her own story.

Numerous critics have renamed her: an allegory, a mirror, a symbol . . . . Jacques Lacan, and then Slavoj Zizek, argues that the Lady in the Courtly Romance is little more than an object—the physical manifestation for the Other, that which the Knight is not. She is dehumanized, existing only to play her role “as an inhuman partner in the sense of a radical Otherness which is wholly incommensurable with our needs and desires; as such, she is simultaneously a kind of automaton, a machine which utters meaningless demands at random” (Zizek 90). This mechanization of the Courtly Lady to this monstrous other diminishes the woman, allowing one to relegate her to baser associations for which she is to act as a tangible representative. Lacan and Zizek assert that it is “when the person involved is transformed into a symbolic function that one is able to speak of her in the crudest terms" (Lacan 149). This reductive reading of women in the Courtly tradition and her inextricable relationship with ideas of seduction, captivity and servitude has merit, however, Lacan’s accusation that “all the poets seem to be addressing the same person” seems a sweeping generalization, especially upon his citation of Chrétien de Troyes by name as an example of the “extreme arbitrariness of the attitude expressed by [. . .] the authors of the period” (Lacan 149, 150). A consideration of the women in Chrétien de Troyes work reveals something very contrary to this idea. Characters like Enide, Fenice, Lunete and even some of the nameless women of Chrétien ’s literary universe stand apart from the trope of the Courtly Lady and from each other. Furthermore, the women within the Romances of Chrétien ’s work often defy the reductionist readings like those of Lacan and Zizek as they successfully undermine the objectification of their gender and recreate the Knight as a reagent, using his shining armor to reflect back onto themselves a subjectivity which the Other has denied them.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XpGyHJZ9b0

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER83SF3-DoY&NR=1

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PP6e5q6OtA

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeeRuJ6eBUw

Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYWl5Zw2kbU

These video links were brought to my attention by an internet cohort who remarked "The debate is simple: Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?"

The idea that "the debate is simple" is a gross misrepresentation. Let's start out with the question in and of itself. Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world? Perhaps one of the most important and only briefly even hinted at by Anne Witticum is the clarification that there are essentially two Catholic Churches. The first is the institution of the Catholic Church in the form of the Vatican and the hierarchy and the doctrinal establishment. The second is the multitudes of people who adhere to the denominational titular label of Catholic.

It is my understanding that, biblically, Christ's first usage of the term "church" comes from the hebrew word ἐκκλησία (phonetically, "ekklēsia"), which suggests a community, not a governing body or a building. Early churches met in the homes of its members, often in secret, and never in one place for long. Early Christianity was a grassroots movement, a wave of belief that grew in magnitude into the tsunami that was the medieval Roman Catholic Church.

I'll spare you all the history lesson, but it's widely documented (though the infallability of history, especially the accuracy of ANYTHING to do with the medieval period or "Dark Ages" is questionable) that the Catholic church has rarely been free of criticism. Furthermore, as a political power, which we MUST recognize the institution of the Catholic Church to be as its see or place of residence is independent from any other country and a city-state in its own right, the Catholic Church has effected political policy under the banner of the church, AND THUS MUST BE HELD LIABLE FOR ITS POLITICS. In my own opinion it has thus far proven itself to be politically abhorrent.

All this said, as a lit major, I tend to be somewhat philologically inclined rather than historically so. As such the simple evidence of language is proof enough for me. A quick jaunt through the Oxford English Dictionary has proven that this biblical term has been superceded and the primary usage of the word is now to refer to the building. This, I'm sure, is what flavored the debate.

However, is the Catholic Church, as understood in the biblical sense to be a community of people, to be held liable for the political decisions of a country to which they are not citizens. Yes, Catholics do show religious allegiance to the papal seat by virtue of their religious affiliations. However, as an essentially diasporic people who have patriotic affiliations to other political nations, should the Catholic Church as a people be held responsible for a nation to whom most of them have never within set foot? Perhaps not. However, they should be held accountable for their own INDIVIDUAL actions and attitudes towards others.

Remember, there is a HUGE continuum from the most apathetic titular only Catholics to the vehement doctrinally violent Catholics. And there are even some Catholics who actually GET the scriptures and lead biblically and ethically sound spiritual lives in communion with God, and not tied to earthbound doctrines. I truly believe that these Christians (and lets get it straight, the definition of Christian is one who follows Christ. A lot of Catholics argue that they are not Christians, but Christian is an umbrella term under of which Catholicism, by nature of believing in Jesus Christ as The Messiah, is a denomination, even if the oldest.) . . . it is these Christians who have the spiritual and ethical capacity to be a force for good in the world and are the salvation of the Catholic Church as a people and a community.

My last point is on debate itself and one I think is often overlooked. It is essential to recognize that debate, by its nature, is not a determination of truth. Debates are won and lost depending upon the arguments presented by each side. In these videos Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens flay the pants off ArchBishop John Aranyakam and Anne Witticum; they are MUCH better debators with solid arguments and a perfected ability to weave appeals to logic, emotion, and ethics. The proponents for the defense of the Catholic Church were weak debators. Their arguments were weak and fluffy. That doesn't mean there AREN'T good arguments to defend the assertion that the Catholic Church is a force for good in this world. They simply were not put forth. If St. Augustine or Thomas a Kempis were involved in that debate, it may have had a very different outcome. However, even that outcome would have been no determination of truth.