Reticent romans : silence and writing in La Vie de Saint Alexis, Le Conte du Graal, and Le Roman de Silence [PhD Diss.]

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. 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 Appendix: Medieval Illustration.242 Vita 243