A Martyr to Love: Sacrificial Desire in the Poetry of Bernart de Ventadorn

Le sacrifice signifie que, dans l'objet de nos désirs, nous essayons de trouver le témoignage de la présence du désir de cet Autre que j'appelle ici le Dieu obscur.

--Jacques Lacan ¹

This article inaugurates a new project: a study of the motif of dying for/of love in medieval literature. The project arises from an interest in exploring the interplay between devotional literature and texts that we think of as profane, but also from an engagement with a body of theoretical reading, in particular Lacanian psychoanalysis. In many ways I am returning to old problems. Do courtly poets make profane love into a "religion"? What does it mean to see profane love as a source of spiritual improvement when the terms in which this is expressed play on vocabulary and imagery that are widespread in devotional literature? This (re)turn to religion is by no means without precedent in psychoanalytically informed criticism of medieval literature. ² Indeed, one of the points I hope to illustrate in this essay is why psychoanalysis--and Lacan in particular--has proved a fruitful tool for thinking about the tension between medieval erotic and spiritual discourses, and also how their interanimation still touches our lives today.

My particular concern here will be with the image of sacrifice in the work of one important and exemplary early troubadour, but the extent of the interplay between the courtly and devotional spheres in troubadour poetry, and in subsequent courtly literature, is considerable. Indeed, there has been a range of responses to the troubadours' use of religious imagery and vocabulary, as there has been to that of their successors in the broader European context. On the one hand, for example, one influential critic states simply, "The mode of fin'amorextolled by the troubadours is conceived in a purely secular framework." ³ Thus, for Moshé Lazar, God is invoked by twelfth-century troubadours only to enlist his help in the poet's invariably adulterous and sensuous project: only in the thirteenth century do courtly and devotional texts begin to influence each other, but this influence works in his view in one direction only, with devotional lyrics borrowing the images and lexis of the profane tradition. But many other critics are more sensitive to the perplexing interplay of registers in courtly poetry. For example, Henri-Irénée Marrou--author of what is still one of the best general introductions to the troubadours--says, "ce culte de la dame, élevée si haut qu'elle en devient, momentanément inaccessible, revêt facilement un aspect quasi religieux. On comprend que certains en soient venus à se demander si cet amour s'adresse à une femme réelle, s'il s'agit encore d'un amour humain." ⁴ Marrou is quite right to approach the question interrogatively. The general tone of many lyrics is indeed "almost" religious, and we are not toldthat the love of which many troubadours sing is more than a "human love"; the use of religious images and vocabulary leads us rather to ask ourselves if this is the case. Apart from Lazar's lack of sensitivity to the interplay of registers in the courtly canso, perhaps the real problem in his approach is his apparent belief in what he calls "a purely secular framework." Is anything "purely secular" in the Middle Ages? Our own grounding in secular social structures and ethics perhaps makes it difficult for us to grasp that the opposition we take for granted between secular and ecclesiastic, between sacred and profane, may simply not be operative within medieval society.

To illustrate this point, I will examine briefly the so-called feudal metaphor. Frequently, a troubadour will talk of himself as his lady's "man" or "liege man"; he pledges her faith and in some instances...