The Blunt Instruments of Literary Criticism
"The lyric appeal of the Bower of Bliss is the isolated moment of its
carpe diem song and its suspended cynosure. . . . We do not need
object-relations theory or Lacanian psychoanalysis to catch the
spell-bound or oral fix of Verdant in the arms of a maternal Acrasia:
indeed, the attempt to apply such contemporary theories to Renaissance
texts often simply reveals the bluntness of our own instruments. And yet
the simultaneous use and critique of Lacan in a famous essay by Laura
Mulvey on the male gaze (in cinema) might provide a suggestive supplement
for students of this particular Spenserian episode, undergraduates and
overgraduates alike. Mulvey describes the mediatory function of the
female -- and the threat of castration she represents -- in the movement
from
the mother-dyad child, which Lacan terms the Imaginary, to the realm of
the Symbolic, the name of the Father and the Law. The narrative of the
overpowering and surpassing of Acrasia uncannily resembles the narrative
progression of this Lacanian family romance" (Parker 64).
volume 2, issue 2
SN 199
