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Chapter Five. Transvestism and Specularity: Transformations and Travesties of the Self
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100 Chapter Five Transvestism and Specularity Transformations and Travesties of the Self D’Urfé and Sorel do not arbitrarily couple the themes of mirroring and transvestism. Both themes involve the perception of a physical appearance meant to designate an identity, a self. These two themes of figuring the self have been commonplaces in Western literature since Apollodorus, Ovid’s Metamorphoses , and Petronius’s Satyricon. D’Urfé and Sorel employ these themes to put language and narrative to the test of representing the visual perception of the self, whether it be through painting , in a reflection, or by a character’s physical appearance. In L’Astrée and Le berger extravagant, depictions of transvestism and mirroring temporarily fix identity only to transform it again, as if by metamorphosis, and they hide as well as reveal aspects of the self and personal intention, as if they functioned like masks. Admittedly, the difference between the transformation of the self and its masking in its visual presentation is great; however, as we will learn from the study of Sorel’s transvestites , the mask can at times enforce a transformation of the imagination, the mental image of the self. Some twentieth-century literary critics have articulated a notion, or series of notions, of Baroque esthetics in writing, and they have based their arguments upon the very problem of the ambiguity of sight, or visual appearance, first in the plastic and pictorial arts, and then in literature. Jean Rousset and Marcel Raymond relied primarily on Wölfflin’s categories of the formal characteristics of the artistic and architectural Baroque to articulate a set of literary themes specific to the period. These literary critics translated the historical characterization of Baroque art as evincing chaotic movement, open form, and irregular distribution of ornament into literary motifs of insta- 101 Transvestism and Specularity bility, mobility, metamorphosis, and emphasis on appearances, such as façades, masks, and disguises.1 This translation of artistic features into literary themes may shed some light on the representational status of transvestism and specularity in d’Urfé’s and Sorel’s narratives. Characters cannot acquire any knowledge of themselves or their world outside the terms of representation, for they must remain within the modes of artifice themselves. Rousset’s summary analysis of pastoral drama—“…on n’atteint au vrai qu’en prenant le détour de l’artifice…”—could be extended to suggest that fictional characters are never sure whether the visual image of the self represents the truth (33). This is generally the case for the representation of visual appearance in French literature of the time, since the visible in its contemporary sense permitted what seemed false to become the truth, and vice versa. According to Françoise Siguret, literary projects exploited the “effet illusioniste de représentation,” and the readership felt no anxiety about the epistemological irresolvability of representations of visual appearance.2 What distinguishes d’Urfé and Sorel in their treatment of the ambiguity of visual appearance, whether it be reflected or cross-dressed? What are their individual approaches to these themes as literary conventions? What kinds of transformations do mirroring and cross-dressing enforce in the depiction of character identity? In L’Astrée, d’Urfé privileges the illusionistic power of appearances and the reflected image to form public opinion and, most importantly, fundamental, individual identity. He specifically builds scenes of visual reflection and opposite-gender costumes on rhetorical articulations, either through his stylistics, or through phrases recast in debates on Neoplatonist and materialist love. He closely follows the convention of disguise as mask when he has characters take on a costume in order to enter forbidden social spaces or to trick and evade their enemies—conventional purposes in pastoral drama and novels (Forestier 25, 30–31).3 Others engage in the illusion of visible disguise so as to become literally another character, that is, to undergo a fundamental metamorphosis of identity. In these cases that we will study, d’Urfé imports the ancient mythological theme of metamorphosis from Ovid and resituates it in the Baroque world of the pastoral romance [18.209.63.120] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:05 GMT) 102 Chapter Five where visual appearance and identity fuse. Rousset characterizes this technique in his comment on Baroque pastoral theater, where “les vêtements ou les voiles composent les corps, les masques se confondent avec les visages” (33). In Le berger extravagant, Sorel at first glance seems to parallel...