Discourse for the Holy Grail in Old French Romance by Ben Ramm (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS111 chronicle, the Historia Brhtonum (143), vastly simplifies and in fact runs counter ro the commonly accepted critical view that one must go back to Arthur's absence in the earlier works ofGildas and Bede to understand the origins ofthe legend and, less commonly, back to the Arthurian references in the uncertainly dated Gododdin as well. Specialists may find similar small lapses throughout, though it must be admitted that the minor slips do not seriously detract from Ortenberg's otherwise thoughtprovoking meditation on how and why the medieval remains with us even today. MICHAEL N. SALDA University ofSouthern Mississippi ben ramm, Discoursefor the Holy Grail in Old French Romance. Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2007. Pp. 182. isbn: 1-84384-109-6. $85. Anyone interested in the application of psychoanalytic theory to literature, and especially Old French literature, will be excited to learn ofBen Ramm's newly released book: A Discoursefor the Holy Grail in Old French Romance. This slim yet dense volume on the Grail legend offers a very different appreciation of the Grail. The influence ofRamm's dissertation director, Sarah Kay, is notable, especially with the attention devoted to the theories ofZizek (Sarah Kay, Zizek:A CriticalIntroduction, Oxford: Polity Press, 2003) as well as those ofLacan and Freud. Ramm's work is inspired by Brigitte Cazelle's The Unholy Grail(Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996; reviewed by David Fowler in Arthuriana 7.2, 1997: 138-40) and Helen Adolfs Visio Pads, Holy City and Grail (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP i960) both ofwhich examine the 'social milieu' ofthe texts, the Crusades and medieval Flanders, respectively, in their analyses ofthe Grail. These provocative views inspired Ramm to consider that the Grail serves not, as Pauphilet suggested almost a century ago, as a symbol ofGod's presence, but as a symbol of 'doubt and high anxiety' (4). As Ramm states, '...the Grail becomes the marker ofontological and epistemological anxiety, deep-rooted in those who embark upon its Quest, and for whom the Grail does not represent an epiphanic, holistic or organic. . .experience ofplenitude and fulfillment, but is a symbol of ideological fracture, uncertainly and impossibility' (4). The four chapterswhich form the body ofthis study examine how certain aspects of the Grail narratives 'can be aligned with one of Lacan's discourse mathemes' (15). As Ramm elaborates: 'The principal intention of this book is to show how the discourse of the Grail constructed by the Old French literary texts is, by turns, a discourse of the Master, then of the University, of the Hysteric and finally of the Analyst—and yet is never fully any one of these' (14-15). The central text upon which Ramm imposes this theory are the Perlesvaus and La Queste del Saint Graal, with occasional reference to Chretien's Conte du Graal and Robort de Boron's Le Roman de TEstoire dou Graal. A good portion ofthe introductory chapter focuses on an explanation ofLacan's four discourses—the discourse of the Master, the University, the Hysteric, and the Analyst—in order to prepare the reader for the application ofthe theory to the selected texts. Included is an explanation of the Lacanian algebra employed ro represent the "2ARTHURIANA interactions of these discourses. Quotations from Zizek are frequently offered as elucidation ofLacanian thought. Chapter one, 'This is not the One: Identity, Abjection and méconnaissance in the Perlesvaus,' examines how Lacan's discourse of the Master might be identified in the Perlesvaus. Ramm contends that the Master's discourse is that of the narrative itself which seeks (unsuccessfully) toerectidentitybutsucceeds onlyin generatingaproductwhich isboth excess and lack, or fantasy. Chapter two, 'Fallingout with God: The Discursive Inconsistency ofLa QuestedelSaint Graal,'explores thenotionsofchivalrydelineated in thetext ofthe prose Queste—the'earthly and spiritual facets of chivalry' (63). Ramm reads the narrative in terms of the Lacanian discourse ofthe University, citing Mark Bracher as he suggests that 'the earthly and celestial facets of chivalry might be considered as two opposing systems of knowledge and...this knowledge. . .articulates the tyrannical discourse ofthe Queste inwhich, as in the discourse of the University, "individuals are to act, think, and desire only in ways that function to enact, reproduce, or extend The System"' (64). He considers this discourse especially in...