Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Love Stories: Narrative Discourses of Desire 1800 – the Present Session Three

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Agenda  Recap  Tennyson, ”The Lady of Shalott”  Historicising desire: Catherine Belsey  Projects

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ”The Cardboard Box”  Miss Susan Cushing, a ”maiden lady of fifty” receives a box addressed to Miss S. Cushing, containing two human ears.  By examining the box and its contents and interviewing Susan, Holmes is able to lay bare a crime of passion: one of the victims is Susan’s sister, Mary, the other is a sailor (Alec), and the murderer is Mary’s husband Jim Browner. Moreover, he establishes that the box was intended for the third sister Sarah, who derailed the marriage between Mary and Jim.

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Desire Perveted or Derailed Jim Browner Mary Sarah Alec Fairbairn Sarah

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Recap: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ”The Cardboard Box”  Desire of / for / in narrative  The proairetic code: the code of actions  The hermeneutic code: the code of enigma and mystery  The anticipation of retrospection

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture A Summary of Session Two Love = the desire or longing for merging or uniting with an other,  But union and fusion = death, i.e. the end of longing,  So merging, uniting and fusing with the other is staged as an impossibility

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture A Summary of Session One  Love is the love of love  Love concerns that which threatens or prevents love: physical, social, pyschological obstacles

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture A Summary of Session One ”La Belle Dame Sans Merci”  The knight and the elfish lady: love is magic (enthralment, enrapture, captivation, fascination, charm)  The narrator and the knight-but-not-quite  The reader and Keat’s odd poem (ballad metre and frame structure)

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Reader ( )

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Lady Reading the Letters of Heloise and Abelard ( )

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Tennyson, ”The Lady of Shalott”  Summarise the poem. Find headings for each of the four sections. What’s her situation like? Why does it change?  Pay particular attention to the following: the lady, Camelot, weaving.  What’s the theme of the poem?

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture John William Waterhouse 1888

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture John William Waterhouse, 1894

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture John William Waterhouse, 1916 ”’I Am Half Sick of Shadows’”, Said The Lady of Shalott”

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture William Holman Hunt

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture John Sidney Meteyard

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Arthur Huges

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture William More Egley

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture John Atkinson Grimshaw

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Romances in the 21st century: King Arthur (2004), Tristan and Iseult (2006)

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Theorising Desire – According to Catherine Belsey. ”Reading Love Stories” Two key assumptions of romance:  Human beings are divided into mind and body  Human beings are incomplete until united with their soul mates

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Theorising Desire – According to Catherine Belsey. ”Reading Love Stories” (cont.)  In romances ”true love offers to unify mind and body” (23)  However, romances celebrate ”the elemental otherness of desire as a constituent of true love” (28) in metaphors of the destruction of subjectivity [remember Keats!]  ”True love, then, is not so much a union of mind and body as an alternation of their dominance” (30)

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Belsey, ”Adultery in King Arthur’s Court” Arthurian legend: Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Elaine, Mark, Tristam, Iseult, etc.  Stories of adultery and homosocial desire: triangular desire - rivalry

Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture Belsey, ”Adultery in King Arthur’s Court” The literary and cultural history of Arthurian legend:  I: the 12th Century romance. ”Love is passionate, extravagant, agonizing, and obsessional” (108). Love is not related to marriage and family  II. The 15th Century romance. Adultery is tolerated.  III. 19th century romance. Adultery in conflict with moral and spiritual (religious) duty