Responding to the Spectral Voice of the Outcast: Reading of William Wordsworth's "The Thorn"
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William Wordsworth's "The Thorn" revolves around the following questions: Whois Martha? Why does she go to the mountain top and repeat her doleful cry?To these questions, it gives us two different kinds of answers; one derives fromthe villagers, and the other from the narrator. This essay attempts to examinehow the answers exemplify two different critical approaches to the problem ofcommunity, using Jacques Lacan's account of sexual difference in his seminaron Encore as a guiding thread of analysis. The important thing to retain hereis that sexual difference in Lacan's seminar on Encore does not so much indicatebiological determinations as two distinct forms of relating to the other whichare intimately bound up with the question of how a community is constructedand maintained. The first form, called "masculine," suggests that it is a radicalexception to a community that makes possible the community as a field of totalityor sameness; the second form, called "feminine," shows that each of the subjectscannot be regarded as a member of a closed community which is guaranteedby the exceptionality, but as an exception that is radically singular. This in turnleads us to consider the possibility that the masculine form has to do with thevillagers' effort to distinguish themselves from Martha and the feminine formwith the way in which the narrator confronts and represents her. In the courseof his formulation of sexuation graph, Lacan stresses that the masculine side mustbe supplemented by the feminine side, which allows us to elaborate on why, concerning Martha, the narrator does not just keep the completely different positionfrom the villagers'. This is to say that the villagers' representation of Martha asan exception to the community should be supplemented by the narrator's attemptto tell Martha's story as the villagers do and at the same time to capture somethingof her enigmatic unrepresentability. Bearing in mind Charles Shepherdson'selaboration of traumatic memory, this essay also tries to clarify how the narratorpreserves and even transmits something of Martha's truth that is embodied inher uncontrollable and unassimilable cry.
Abstract
William Wordsworth's "The Thorn" revolves around the following questions: Whois Martha? Why does she go to the mountain top and repeat her doleful cry?To these questions, it gives us two different kinds of answers; one derives fromthe villagers, and the other from the narrator. This essay attempts to examinehow the answers exemplify two different critical approaches to the problem ofcommunity, using Jacques Lacan's account of sexual difference in his seminaron Encore as a guiding thread of analysis. The important thing to retain hereis that sexual difference in Lacan's seminar on Encore does not so much indicatebiological determinations as two distinct forms of relating to the other whichare intimately bound up with the question of how a community is constructedand maintained. The first form, called "masculine," suggests that it is a radicalexception to a community that makes possible the community as a field of totalityor sameness; the second form, called "feminine," shows that each of the subjectscannot be regarded as a member of a closed community which is guaranteedby the exceptionality, but as an exception that is radically singular. This in turnleads us to consider the possibility that the masculine form has to do with thevillagers' effort to distinguish themselves from Martha and the feminine formwith the way in which the narrator confronts and represents her. In the courseof his formulation of sexuation graph, Lacan stresses that the masculine side mustbe supplemented by the feminine side, which allows us to elaborate on why, concerning Martha, the narrator does not just keep the completely different positionfrom the villagers'. This is to say that the villagers' representation of Martha asan exception to the community should be supplemented by the narrator's attemptto tell Martha's story as the villagers do and at the same time to capture somethingof her enigmatic unrepresentability. Bearing in mind Charles Shepherdson'selaboration of traumatic memory, this essay also tries to clarify how the narratorpreserves and even transmits something of Martha's truth that is embodied inher uncontrollable and unassimilable cry.
참고문헌 (14)
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