Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Peter Haidu taught medieval literature and critical theory at Columbia, Yale, Virginia, and Illinois, before retiring from UCLA. He now lives in Paris. He is the author of Subject of Violence: The Song of Roland and the Birth of the State.

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THE SUBJECT MEDIEVAL/MODERN

Stanford University Press

Contents

Introduction...............................................................................1PART I. BEFORE THE STATE1. The Peace Movement: A Crisis in Ideology................................................92. War, Peasant Revolt, and the Saint Alexis...............................................393. Epic and the King's Peace: The Song of Roland and Louis' Coronation.....................574. The Love-Lyric as Political Technology..................................................795. Chrtien de Troyes: The Perspectival Novel..............................................956. "Marie de France": The Postcolonial lais................................................1217. Raoul de Cambrai: Haunting Violence.....................................................142PART II. GOVERNANCE8. Representation in State Governance I: Literacy..........................................1559. Representation in State Governance II: Agency...........................................180PART III. IN STATE10. Problematizing the Subject: Rose I.....................................................21511. Problematizing Identity: Silence.......................................................23912. Subject and Community: Adam's "Congs".................................................26613. The Subject on the Subject: Philippe de Beaumanoir.....................................28114. Ideologies of Subjectivity: Christine de Pizan and Alain Chartier......................30315. "Love for Sale": Franois Villon's Textament of Solidarity.............................328Conclusion: The Medieval Crucible..........................................................341Notes......................................................................................365Index......................................................................................437

Chapter One

A Crisis in Ideology

Two Models of Subjectivity

ABJECTION: BENEDICT OF NURSIA (SIXTH CENTURY)

Two models of subjectivity appear early in the Middle Ages. One indexes what is often designated as the "medieval" subject, committed to the subjection of complete abnegation. For the monk living under the rule of Benedict of Nursia, founder of the Benedictine order, submission to the Rule was absolute:

No one in the monastery should follow the will of his own heart, and neither inside nor outside the walls should anyone presume to argue with the abbot.

In this world, none under his rule (regula: a straight-edge, measuring stick, a staff to whip inattentive schoolboys, a pattern or model for behavior: the means and symbol of "discipline"). Under a regula, the subjectus is an inferior, thrown under the authority and command of another, reduced to "passive ... reflex-type conduct."

The medieval church and theology knew the modern subject, however. Ideological campaigns, the persecutorial machines of the Inquisition, were constructed against it. Correct belief and submission was seen as granting freedom: "To have liberty is to be led by the spirit of the Lord; not to have liberty is not to be led by the spirit of the Lord." Wrong beliefs and practices, the absence of belief, arrogance toward established authority, the conviction or fear that the universe offered a void filled with independent desire, judgment, and self-assertion, rather than a plenitude of closure, were what had to be repressed, excluded, exorcised. In its effort to enclose and limit the damages of this potential of self-assertion as always already culpable desire, the medieval Christian imaginary constructed a theological diegesis which possessed a kind of objective reality but lacked an outside: the other side of nonbeing was God, its sustaining center, allowing only a flat, depthless surface of existence to thirsty humanity. The church knew the subject: it was the antagonist, the Devil incarnate.

AGENCY: THE OATHS OF STRASBOURG (842)

Charlemagne's surviving son, Louis the Pious, leaves three sons, who engage in repeated, violent conflicts. Two-Louis the Germanic and Charles the Bald-unite against the third, Lothaire. His defeat allows a negotiated division of the empire in three parts. Charles will rule Western Francia, to become France itself; Louis gets Eastern France, to become Germany; Lothaire's intermediary zone runs from the Netherlands to northern Italy: "Lotharingia." The Oaths of Strasbourg divide the Carolingian empire in 842, establishing the ancestor-states of modern France and Germany. They mark the linguistic division between Latin and the vernaculars, and between French and German.

The Oaths, on February 14, 842, are political performatives. Each brother concedes to the other his territory. Each swears not to ally himself with Lothaire against the third. Each swears aid and protection to the other. The reporter is one Nithard, warrior, court diplomat, historian. Along with the official Latin text, he includes the oath in early forms of French and German. The oaths actually pronounced were not the official Latin: the Germanic king swears in Romance, the French king in German. The oaths' effectivity depends on their being understood and trusted, not only by the kings, the enunciator's other, but by their men: their own, and their brothers.' Their content is quite extraordinary. Each king has his men swear that if he, their prince, betrays his brother, they, his own men, will not follow him, their own lord, against the brother: if the king betrays his brother, his men are to break their loyalty to him. Vernaculars were essential for the success of the diplomacy. Adherence presumes the investment of speakers in their language, and their belief in its performative value. This social contract links, in its initiating historicity, issues that modern modes of thinking separate: polity, language, and textuality. Each implies the others.

Nithard documents a calculated recognition of a new and complex reality: multiple cultures, multiple languages, work in the same political space, calling on subjects in different languages-a necessitated multiculturalism. A new order reigns: new power, political and military, resides in the vernacular. Latin long survives, among monks and clergy who "died to the world" and retired from overt competitions for power and wealth. It also remains an administrative and legal language, even in secular domains. Decisions, bureaucratically recorded in Latin, must have been argued and decided in the vernacular. Henceforth, power in the world belongs to men who speak, think, and live the vernaculars. Among speakers of Latin, popes, bishops, abbots, retain power. Governance operates across a linguistic discrepancy. Bilingualism was the order of centuries.

That the Oaths mark a crucial moment in the development of the vernacular as political discourse is incidental to their role in a calculus of political forces. Not only the kings swear: their men swear and commit themselves to a course of future action that could pit them directly against the king who claims their loyalty. The kings' underlings are placed in the position of having to judge their lord and leader: if they judge him to have betrayed his word, they are mandated to rebel against him. Under prescribed...