Seductions in Narrative: Subjectivity and Desire in the Works of ...

He forgets his own name—“ne ne li manbre de son nom”—whether he is armed—“ne set s’il est armez ou non”—or, even, where he is going or where he comes from—“ne set ou va, ne set d’on vient”. Through the quasi-magical operations of desire and seduction, Lancelot is suddenly propelled into a kind of limbo, a no-man’s-land where he ceases to be himself through the progressive loss of name, armour, and direction. Desire takes Lancelot to a pre-discursive, nameless state where his subjectivity as a knight of the Round Table can be effectively dismantled, deconstructed. The main question is why.

Catherine Belsey’s definition of desire might cast some light on the situation Lancelot finds himself in. In Desire: Love Stories in Western Culture , Belsey describes desire as:

Belsey’s definition is intoxicated by the exhilarating essence of desire as “a madness, and enchantment,” permeating it with its inherent contradictions. Providing a definition of desire may be ludicrous but it is also amusing. It allows us to participate in the futile challenge of naming “what remains unspoken in the utterance” and, therefore, “has no settled place to be” (Belsey, Desire 5). Belsey’s study is just an instance in a long list of texts about desire, countless pages attempting to articulate what cannot be named within culture.⁹ When writing about desire, there is always something which remains elusive, something which is, possibly, what propels the compulsion to continue writing about it: “[d]esire eludes final definition,” Belsey argues, “with the result that its character, its nature, its meaning, becomes itself an object of desire for the writer” (Desire 3). Is it possible that the main object of desire may be desire itself?

The resistance of desire to be defined within the rational apparatus of language mimics the effect of desire on the subject, at least on the subject Lancelot above, who forgets his name, his sense of security and direction, and becomes lost in the feeling of rapture which his overflowing desire provokes.