Abstract
This chapter treats narcissism and selfhood, through the lens of melancholy, in René d’Anjou’s Book of the Love-Smitten Heart (c. 1457). Wounded by Love’s arrow upon seeing his beloved, René remains melancholic, incapable of satisfying his longing. Melancholy works to keep this wound open, creating a space where René can fixate upon his “loss” as fulfillment seems attainable. This chapter examines through text and illuminations the scenes where René’s heart (1) is removed by Love, (2) encounters the Fountain of Fortune, a spring of melancholic bile that allows him to fixate upon his beloved’s image, and (3) discovers he must submit to Love before the Diamond Mirror, a double of Narcissus’s fountain, realizing his selfhood is forever wounded by frustrated desires which, nonetheless, appear achievable.
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Notes
- 1.
Portions of this chapter appeared as: Nicholas Ealy, “The Poet at the Mirror: René d’Anjou and Authorial Doubling in the Livre du Coeur d’Amour épris” in Fifteenth-Century Studies 37, ed. Barbara Gusick and Matthew Heintzelman (Rochester: Camden House, 2012): 17–46. The Book of the Love-Smitten Heart exists in seven manuscripts, two of which will be considered for this study. The Vienna manuscript (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Vind. 2597) has 127 folios measuring 290 x 207 mm, dates from approximately 1460, and contains sixteen framed miniatures. The Bibliothèque nationale de France manuscript 24399 has 137 folios measuring 310 × 215 mm and contains seventy miniatures.
- 2.
Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Armand Strubel (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1992), vv. 1568–71, 126, my translation.
- 3.
David Hult , Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Readership and Authority in the First “Roman de la Rose” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 297.
- 4.
Claire Nouvet, “A Reversing Mirror: Guillaume de Lorris’ Romance of the Rose” in Translatio Studii: Essays by His Students in Honor of Karl D. Uitti for His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski et al. (Amsterdam: Rodopoi, 2000), 194.
- 5.
René d’Anjou, Le Livre du Cœur d’amour épris, ed. Florence Bouchet (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 2003), 86. Quotations in Middle French, with verse and page numbers cited, when appropriate, are from this edition. English translations are my own.
- 6.
Ibid., v. 6, 88.
- 7.
For melancholy in the Middle Ages, see: Giorgio Agamben , Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture, trans. Ronald L. Martinez (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1993), 11–28.
- 8.
Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 14, trans. and ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1964), 245.
- 9.
Ibid., 253; “Trauer und Melancholie” in Psychologie des Unbewuβten 3, ed. Alexander Mitscherlich (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1994), 206.
- 10.
René, Cœur, vv. 1–11 and 16, 88.
- 11.
Nouvet recognizes this in the Romance of the Rose. See: “Reversing,” 190.
- 12.
François Garnier , Le Langage de l’image au moyen âge: signification et symbolique (Paris: Léopard d’or, 1983), 117.
- 13.
René, Cœur, vv. 12–15, 88.
- 14.
Erin Felicia Labbie, Lacan’s Medievalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 128.
- 15.
René, Cœur, vv. 75–82, 100.
- 16.
Ibid., vv. 265–68, 124.
- 17.
Ibid., 130.
- 18.
Ibid., vv. 317–18 and 321–26, 132.
- 19.
See Chapsters 2, 3, 4, and 5 of Agamben’s Stanzas, 11–28.
- 20.
René, Cœur, 132, 134.
- 21.
Ibid., 98.
- 22.
Freud, “Mourning,” 245.
- 23.
Ibid., 249; Freud, “Trauer,” 206.
- 24.
Agamben, Stanzas, 20.
- 25.
Part of this discussion of melancholy is based on my previous work: Nicholas Ealy, “‘Tu es déjà rentré?’: Trauma, Narcissism and Melancholy in François Ozon’s Sous le sable (2001)” in Studies in French Cinema 17.3 (2017), 217–35.
- 26.
René, Cœur, vv. 1853–62, 400, 402.
- 27.
Ibid., 394.
- 28.
Kenneth J. Knoespel , Narcissus and the Invention of Personal History (New York: Garland, 1985), 86.
- 29.
Ibid., op. cit. 86.
- 30.
Jean Arrouye, “Le Cœur et son paysage” in Le “Cuer” au moyen âge: réalité et sénéfiance, ed. Margaret Bertrand (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1991), 36.
- 31.
Ibid., 38.
- 32.
Le Lapidaire en prose, ed. Léopold Pannier (Paris: F. Vieweg, 1882), 294, translation mine.
- 33.
For Pliny’s commentary on Nero, see Book 37 of his Natural History X, ed. and trans. D.E. Eichholz (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1962), 212–15.
- 34.
René, Cœur, 398.
- 35.
See: Gilles Polizzi , “‘Sens plastique’: Le Spectacle des merveilles dans le Livre du cuer d’amour epsris” in De l’étranger à l’étrange ou la ‘conjointure’ de la merveille, ed. Margariet Rossi and Paul Bancourt (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1988), 395–430.
- 36.
René, Cœur, 398, my emphasis.
References
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Ealy, Nicholas. 2012. The Poet at the Mirror: René d’Anjou and Authorial Doubling in theLivre du Coeur d’Amour épris.Fifteenth-Century Studies 37, 17–46. Rochester: Camden House.
———. 2017. “Tu es déjà rentré?”: Trauma, Narcissism and Melancholy in François Ozon’s Sous le sable (2001). Studies in French Cinema 17 (3): 217–235.
Freud, Sigmund. 1964. Mourning and Melancholia. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 14. Trans. and Ed. James Strachey, 243–258. London: Hogarth.
———. 1994. Trauer und Melancholie. In Psychologie des Unbewuβten 3, ed. Alexander Mitscherlich, 193–212. Frankfurt: S. Fischer.
Garnier, François. 1983. Le Langage de l’image au moyen âge: signification et symbolique. Paris: Léopard d’or.
Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. 1992. Le Roman de la Rose. Ed. Armand Strubel. Paris: Librairie Générale Française.
Hult, David. 1986. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Readership and Authority in the First “Roman de la Rose”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Knoespel, Kenneth J. 1985. Narcissus and the Invention of Personal History. New York: Garland.
Labbie, Erin Felicia. 2006. Lacan’s Medievalism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Le Lapidaire en prose. 1882. In Les lapidaires français du moyen âge des XII e , XIII e et XIV e siècles. Ed. Léopold Pannier, 286–297. Paris: F. Vieweg.
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Pliny. 1962. Pliny: Natural History X (Books 36–37). Ed. and Trans. D.E. Einchholz. Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library.
Polizzi, Gilles. 1988. “Sens plastique”: Le Spectacle des merveilles dans le Livre du cuer d’amours espris. In De l’étranger à l’étrange ou la “conjointure” de la merveille, ed. Marguerite Rossi and Paul Bancourt, 395–430. Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence.
René d’Anjou. 2003. Le Livre du Coeur d’Amour épris. Ed. Florence Bouchet. Paris: Librairie Générale Française.
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Ealy, N. (2019). Narcissus and Melancholy: René d’Anjou’s Book of the Love-Smitten Heart . In: Narcissism and Selfhood in Medieval French Literature. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27916-5_4
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