Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvere Song

This study brings the songs of the trouveres to an encounter with Lacanian psychoanalytic theories of signification, sexual difference and unconscious desire. In trouvere song desire functions as a means of generic and 'genderic' differentiation. The trouveres distinguished between sexual need or lust and fin 'amors, the latter usually confined to the masculine voice in high style. Less exalted persons, in whose company women were already included, appear as incapable of desire in the fin 'amors register. Critics have treated the issue of desire as represented in the courtly chanson but, because scholarship has followed the trouveres' distinction between desire and lust, discussion of desire has been limited to songs in the courtly register rather than across the system of genres. There has been, therefore, no exhaustive examination of the links between desire and genre, although the gendering of desire has now received some attention. Desire in Lacan's sense, that is unconscious desire, is present in all genres and voices, however. All lyric subjects make demands but these demands are subverted by hidden desires which can only be inferred. Desire is differently hidden in different genres, however, and must be uncovered by different means. This book unearths the unspoken desires of trouvere song by an attention to the characteristic means by which subjects subvert their demands in different genres.

Helen Dell is a research fellow in Literary Studies in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Australia.