A Doctrine of Vanities: Idolatry, Desire, and the Medieval Self

Abstract

This dissertation argues that the traditional framework for understanding idolatry misses a pivotal aspect of its underlying mechanism. Whilst the association between idolatry and erotic desire, namely fornication, has been attested from the Old Testament onwards, the reason why idolatry in particular has this erotic function remains relatively unaddressed. Therefore, this dissertation makes two major assertions about idolatry. The first is that idolatry is a form of disavowal in that the idolater, whilst remaining conscious of social and ethical constraints, nevertheless pursues his own intimate desire through the veneration of the perceived object of that desire. The second assertion is that idolatry emerges from this as a device that both captures and organises desire, allowing for a structure that externalises desire onto objects. With this understanding of idolatry as a device that both captures desire and therefore allows a perceived limitless encounter with it, the dissertation explores the development of idolatry from a concern with the material object of veneration to the interiorisation of a mental idolatry in the Middle Ages. Having established such a genealogy from Greek philosophy, the Bible, and patristic texts, the dissertation moves on to an examination of the literary production of the twelfth-century northern French court of Marie de Champagne, namely the work of Chrétien de Troyes and Andreas Capellanus, and the use of idolatry as an erotic and literary experiment that is employed to try to address contradictions of the burgeoning concept of the self. It then turns to Tuscany and the poetry of Guittone d’Arezzo and Francesco da Barberino, and how the attempts made by these authors to control and codify idolatrous desire produce novel, and more complex, forms of idolatry. The dissertation posits that idolatry is a device that allows for an exploration of one’s desire in relation to the inherent division of the self (that is, that the self arises as a site of contradiction and tension in which social convention and individual erotic desire cannot be aligned or synthesised). Therefore, the literary object becomes a space for the exploration of desire, but one that offers the illusion of a completion of that desire. In doing so, it becomes revered much like an idol and demonstrates the inherent issue of self-replication at the heart of idolatry.