L'Etreinte des mots: Flamenca, entre poésie et roman (review)

Abstract

REVIEW Jean-Charles Huchet, L'Etreinte des mots: Flamenca, entre poésie et roman. Caen: Paradigme, 1993. Pp. 232. While the three works ofJean-Charles Huchet (L'Etreinte des mots, Le roman occitan medieval and Littérature médiévale et psychanalyse: Pour une clinique littéraire) are linked by Huchet's methodological apparatus, L 'Etreinte des mots is a successful illustration ofhis methods, producing a sophisticated reading of the Occitan romance Flamenca. The text ofFlamenca is shown to initiate a dialogue with othergenres to define itselfand to attempt to produce a renewal ofOccitan literature through the interrogation ofthe principles oítrobar and amor, and their integration into the novas. The text also attempts to mediate and resolve the tension between several binary concepts, such as troubadour lyric and religious dialogue, lyric poetry and romance, Occitan and French literature. In the first chapter, Huchet summarizesFlamenca and comments on the poor reception of the work at the time of its writing. He also gives a briefdescription of his "clinique littéraire," but refers the reader to his Littérature médiévale et psychanalyse for a more detailed explanation. Through this method, his reading of Flamenca attempts to clarify "Ie rapport de lasexualité et de l'écriture, des genres littéraires, del'écriture et de la réécriture" (25) Huchet beginsthe second chapterwith the problem ofgenre, passing through the medieval references to novas and arriving at his own definition: "le signe du dialogue entretenu par le texte narratif avec la lyrique" (31), which opens a space of renewal for both genres through their dialogue. The primary focus ofthe chapter is the dialogue between poetry and narrative, each serving as the Other through which identity is questioned. The lyric in Flamenca is presented in a fictionalized form and serves as a mise-en-abîme ofa key moment ofthe narrative. As lyric 48 REVIEW is converted into narrative, religious discourse is converted into love discourse, prefiguring events in the text and taking on a profane meaning. Huchet also discusses the textual play on the concept of fin amor "qui fai soen de dos core us," which he finds in the constant reduction of two to one in the text. In the third chapter, Huchet addresses the question oí Flamenca's dialoguewithfin'amorand thetext's attempt to synthesizeand renewthe troubadour discourse within the narrative form. The decline offin amor and troubadour poetry is attributed to the reinforcement ofalterity, with the rise of the cult of the Virgin Mary and the replacement of the Dame with a truly unattainable lady. Rather than emphasizing the impossibility of union, Flamenca reintroduces a real woman and thefach intofin' amor. At the same time, the narrative valorizes the word and its meaning(s), stressing the difference between gilosia, in which the husband loses sens (meaning) and misreads signs, and amor, which is "une longue initiation à la polysémie des signes" (108). Language assures the success of the union which no longer denies (hefach, and gilosia becomes the excess which words cannot express. The role of trobar in this dialogue is not the traditional jouissance of unfulfilled desire and sexual impasse, but the construction ofa union in language before its inscription in reality through ihefach. In a series of short analyses of various episodes, Huchet explores in detail the principle of "dos cors us." In examining the salutz sent to Flamenca by Guilhem, Huchet lingers on its illumination and the trick offolding it to make the lovers depicted there seem to embrace. He relates its folding, unfoldingand refoldingto the structure ofthe text itself, which allows the interplay of poetry and romance throughout the narrative. The interplay ofreligion and love discourse is the topic ofthe fourth chapter, divided into discussions on religious versus poetic discourse, liturgical versus romance time and intervals between events. Romance discourse puts religious and other discourses under tension in order to exceed them and to draw its own identity from them while reinforcing the 49 REVIEW specificity of each. The liturgical calendar is discussed as a part of the dialogue with religious discourse, stressing the Otherness of religion in relation iofin' amor. Huchet suggestsyet anotherdialogue in Chapter5, that ofOccitania with France. The novas seems to follow...