Willingly and with Pleasure
Desiring Politics in the Couronnement de Louis
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12358381 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jason Jacobs (0000-0003-2371-7840, Roger Williams University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 319-344 |
| Publication date | 2024-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Exemplaria (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1041-2573 • E-ISSN: 1753-3074 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10412573.2024.2433921 |
| OpenAlex | W4407901719 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
This essay describes how the aristocratic hero’s loyalty toward his king and lord is produced, sustained, and put to politically effective use in the chanson de geste the Couronnement de Louis by reading the twelfth-century poem for evidence of its hero’s desire. In providing Charlemagne with an unwilling heir in the form of the titular Louis, I argue, the Couronnement breaks open the ideology of lineal inheritance and hereditary monarchy and lays bare a field of political culture crisscrossed by the desires of powerful men: desires for titles and power, land and wealth, certainly; but also desires that constitute their relationships with one another. In taking Charlemagne’s unwilling heir Louis as the object of his continual devotion, the hero Guillaume d’Orange must necessarily subordinate his own interests as such (political, economic, lineal, and indeed sexual), to the interests of the younger man, ultimately coordinating his desires relative to those of his lord. Reading Guillaume’s loyalty as Freudian libido—and therefore as alterable, reversible, and re-arrangeable in terms of quantity, intensity, attachment, and aim—defamiliarizes the familiar, structural image of the lord-vassal bond, producing a finer-grained understanding of how power and politics work at the level of what men want for themselves and from one another
Art · Humanities · Pleasure · Political science · Politics · Psychotherapist · Sociology · French Literature and Criticism · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Law · Psychology · Renaissance Literature and Culture
The Norman Kingdom of Sicily
Between Men
Medieval Boundaries
How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments
Begging Pardon and Favor
The language of psychoanalysis
Two Houses, Two Kingdoms
Nobility and Family in Medieval France
Gut feelings
An Inheritance of Violence
Anticipatory Association of the Heir in Early Capetian France
King and Emperor
Dans la France du Nord-Ouest au XIIe siècle
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |