LACAN'S MIRROR AND BEYOND: DANTE, SPENSER, AND MILTON ('LA DIVINA COMMEDIA,' 'THE FAERIE QUEENE,' 'PARADISE LOST,' PSYCHOANALYSIS)

The theories of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan concerning human psychic development provide a significant metastructure for interpreting the motivation of five major epic figures: Dante the pilgrim in La Divina Commedia, Britomart in Spenser's The Faerie Queene, and Satan, Eve, and Adam in Milton's Paradise Lost. Each of these psychodramas begins at the point Lacan has posited as the primal phase of all human psychic experience, which he has called the "mirror stage," located within the pre-verbal realm of the Imaginary. My reading of each poem begins with each poet's focus upon a mirror, either a literal mirror image, when Britomart sees Arthegall in Merlin's magic glass and when Eve gazes upon her reflection in the Edenic lake, or a "mirroring" relationship, like Dante's with Beatrice, Satan's with God the Father, and Adam's with Eve, whereby the individual's sense of "self" depends upon the positive responses of an "other."; The illusion of the mirror stage is that a perfect harmony between self and other--usually between child and mother--is possible. To accept the impossibility of this basic human desire is to transcend the mirror and to find one's place as a mature adult in the real world of language, law, and authority that Lacan terms the Symbolic. The order or words, of speech, supersedes the infantile realm of visual images. The formal motif of the epic quest is portrayed in these three poems as a psychic journey either toward or away from the objective of psychic freedom from impossible desire, a freedom that can only be achieved through obedience to a higher authority: Dante's desire for Beatrice leads him to God and to his own identity as a poet; Britomart's quest for the mirror knight teaches her that she cannot escape her destiny as woman; and Satan's descent into Hell reveals the tragic consequences of the psychotic's refusal to repress his desire for power, while Adam and Eve are freed from the narcissistic self-absorption that characterizes their paradise when they submit to God's will. The Lacanian metastructure thus provides a fruitful method for "deciphering" the psychological signification of the poetry of Dante, Spenser, and Milton.