Changes

Courtly [[love ]] is a [[tradition ]] of lyric [[poetry ]] that developed in Provence, southern [[France]], in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries and which spread throughout Western [[Europe ]] in the Middle Ages. It embodies a [[whole ]] [[philosophy ]] of love and represents an elaborate [[code ]] of [[behaviour ]] which governs the relations between 'aristocratic' lovers, turning the more [[bodily ]] and [[erotic ]] aspects of love into a spiritual [[experience ]] and the most elevated of passions. The courtly lover both idealizes and is idealized by his [[beloved ]] and [[subjects ]] himself entirely to her desires. However, there is an inherent [[impossibility]], an obstacle to the fulfilment of love, in the very [[structure ]] of courtly love. As it developed, courtly love often entailed the love between a single knight and a [[married ]] [[woman]]. The most famous example of this in [[English ]] [[literature ]] is the love between Lancelot and Guinevere in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. This love cannot be consummated in a [[physical ]] [[sense ]] and, if it is, disaster and [[death ]] ensues. Courtly love therefore involves the agonies of unfulfilled love, but the lover remains [[true ]] to his beloved, manifesting his honour and steadfastness in an unswerving adherence to the code of behaviour.

What [[Lacan ]] finds of interest in these chivalric romances is, first, its [[symbolic ]] aspect. Courtly love is 'a poetic exercise, a way of playing with a [[number ]] of conventional, idealizing themes, which couldn't have any [[real ]] [[concrete ]] equivalent' (1992 [1986]: 148). Nevertheless, these symbolic conventions do have real concrete effects and even continue to organize 'contemporary man's sentimental attachments' (1992 [1986]: 148). First and foremost of these is 'the Lady', an impossibly idealized [[figure ]] for which no real equivalent [[exists]]. Lacan writes:

<blockquote>The [[object ]] involved, the [[feminine ]] object, is introduced oddly enough through the door of [[privation ]] or of inaccessibility. Whatever the [[social ]] [[position ]] of him who functions in the [[role]], the inaccessibility of the object is posited as a point of departure.(1992 [1986]: 149)</blockquote>

The Lady is the [[objet ]] a (or das [[Ding]], as Lacan calls it in this [[seminar]]) - that [[impossible ]] object [[cause ]] of [[desire ]] that inaugurates the movement of desire itself. Crucially, then, she is not only unattainable but never existed in the first [[place]]; she is an idealized [[image ]] for which there is no real equivalent. In The Metastases of [[Enjoyment ]] Žižek points out that Lacan is careful here not to elevate the Lady to the status of a '[[sublime]]' spiritualized object; she is rather an 'abstract [[character]]' - 'a cold, distanced, inhuman partner' who functions like an [[automaton ]] or [[machine]]: '[T]he Lady is thus as far as possible from any kind of purified spirituality: she functions as an inhuman partner in the sense of radical [[Otherness ]] which is wholly incommensurable with our [[needs ]] and desires' (1994:90).

If the Lady of courtly love can be said to act as a [[mirror ]] upon which the [[male ]] lovers [[project ]] their idealized [[images ]] and [[fantasies]], then this can only take place if the mirror is there already. This surface, the Lady, 'functions as a kind of black [[hole ]] in [[reality]], as a [[limit ]] whose Beyond is inaccessible' (Žižek1994:91). In [[other ]] [[words]], she is exactly the kind of figure that one can have no empathetic [[relationship ]] with whatsoever. She is that [[traumatic ]] Otherness that Lacan designates as the [[Thing ]] or [[the Real]].

This is the structure of courtly love that continues to resonate with contemporary audiences and Žižek gives as an example of this Neil Jordan's 1993 [[film ]] The Crying [[Game]]. The Crying Game centres on the 'love' affair between a member of the IRA, Fergus, on the run in [[London]], and a beautiful hairdresser, Dil. While Fergus falls in love with Dil, she 'maintains an ambiguous ironic, sovereign distance towards him' (1994:103). Eventually Dil gives way to Fergus's advances, but before they make love Dil retires to [[another ]] room and changes into a semi-[[transparent ]] nightgown. As the camera slowly follows Fergus's [[gaze ]] and covetously moves down Dil's [[body]], in one of the most startling moments in [[recent ]] [[cinema]], we suddenly see 'her' [[penis]]. Dil is a transvestite. Repulsed, Fergus pushes her away and throws up. After this failed [[sexual ]] [[encounter ]] their relationship is reversed and Dil becomes obsessively in love with Fergus, while he remains distant towards her. What we see here, therefore, is precisely the asymmetry that Lacan describes in all sexual relationships between 'what the lover sees in the loved one and what the loved one [[knows ]] himself to be' (1994:103). This is the inescapable deadlock of all sexual relationships, according to Lacan. Dil's love for Fergus is so absolute and unconditional that Fergus slowly overcomes his aversion to her. As the IRA tries to draw Fergus back into its activities, Dil shoots and kills Fergus's ex-lover and IRA operative, Jude. Fergus assumes [[responsibility ]] for the killing and is imprisoned. The film ends with Dil visiting Fergus in prison, dressed once again as a provocatively [[seductive ]] woman. They are now separated by the glass partition denying [[them ]] any physical contact. For Žižek, this scenario encapsulates the impossibility of the [[sexual relationship]].