| Textiles constitute a secondary signifying system in the Lais of Marie de France. There they actually function as texts-within-a-text. Etymologically, both text and textile derive from weaving. We read these textiles as complete signs that transfer meaning, as symbols whose meaning may or may not be interpreted, or merely as signals highlighting import. The quantity of textile references in Marie's minimalistic texts emphasizes their potential for meaning. In view of the fact that women were the primary producers of textiles until the late Middle Ages, they should be read as a form of feminine text, especially since we presume their author to be a woman.; Marie's textiles texts pursue an understanding of selfhood. We find that thematically they relate to violence: as pages that simply tell that a violent incident has occurred (Guigemar, Yonec, Laüstic); as both agents of (Laüstic, Yonec, Guigemar) and protection from violence (Yonec, Fresne, Bisclavret); and as texts that actually narrate violent events (Fresne, Laüstic, Guigemar). They also begin a physical healing, coupled with psychic healing that is part of an expansion of the subject involving increased powers and agency ( Guigemar). Such an actualization of selfhood is a process identified here as “subjectivity”: the “self” negotiating emergence into conscious, intentioned social contextuality. In that process, textiles may carry the subject away, literally and through maternal metaphors, to a fantastic realm of the Merveilleux, evoking Lacan's Imaginary but functioning more as a Kristévan Semiotic of synaesthetic fulfillment ( Milun, Guigemar, Lanval). The tactile comfort textiles provide replaces and substantiates lost mother love and can even empower language ( Lanval). In the end, one must be able to choose a balance ( Bisclavret) between textiles' power to express selfhood ( Fresne, Lanval, Yonec) or confine it to a social role (Guigemar, Laüstic).; The Lais show that generation of the subject is actually born of violence, and choosing a form of self-violence is often necessary in order to offer subject growth to another. However reciprocal nurturing is optimal, as male threads of vertical relationships are necessary for the feminine horizontal weaving of cloth. Textiles, then, as a subset of text and language, are actually the form or figure for subjectivity, which is the emergence of empowered subjectivity through the tension of the inescapable violence of dynamic relationships. |
