2 - Imagining sodomy

Summary

It is thus paradoxically through the study of the text's misrepresentation of reality that we can seize its ideological dimension as the “indispensable mapping fantasy or narrative by which the individual subject invents a ‘lived’ relationship with collective systems,” as Jameson put it. In this way we can construct the text as a map of its own ideological and psychological investments, its fears, hopes and desires. The fact that the map never coincides with the terrain does not mean that there never was a terrain at all.

Michael Nerlich has called the knight-errant, an emblematic figure of the twelfth century, the most important contribution made by that century to the legacy of Europe. As the forerunner of the merchant/adventurer, the knight seeks revelation and reward at the end of his journey; then, through recounting his travels, seeks to shore up his own prestige. This knight/adventurer nonetheless posed several basic ideological problems to a society which valued strong male bonds and a spirit of collective responsibility. The many studies on the individual in the literature of the period emphasize the gradual emergence of the knight as a super-star, the sinner as directly answerable to God rather than the community, and the lady as having a voice as well as a place within patriarchal exchange. All of these changes proved challenging to conventional mores and resentment against them surfaces repeatedly in texts produced at the French and Anglo-Norman courts.