دانلود کتاب A Semiotics of Allegory (An Allegory of Semiotics): A Study of Guillaume De Lorris’ "Roman de la Rose"

The Greimasian methodology of semiotic analysis is well suited to the investigation of a seemingly mundane given--that Guillaume de Lorris' Roman de la Rose is an unfinished narrative--which in fact allows the situating of narrative clearly in social relations. What does our unwillingness to accept Guillaume's Rose as complete have to say about our societal sense of what constitutes narrative? Is there a narrative competence--similar to linguistic competence--that we have unconsciously acquired and that tells us whether narrative meaning has successfully been communicated? And if so, what is it that entails complete narrative meaning?

At all levels of the Rose--micro-sequential, segmental, sequential and global--the governing structure which constantly appears is that of exchange: communicative, material, visual, affective, etc. Because there is no final euphoric exchange in which the Lover participates at the end of the Rose, we feel it is incomplete. This exchange has been promised to us by the narrator and to the Lover by the god of Love. Therefore, it was supposed to take place.

Analysis of exchange networks in the Rose introduces the role and ideological placement of the object being exchanged. Learning through narrative of the exchange of objects sociolectically teaches how properly to exchange objects and to be exchanged as objects. This correlation underscores the deep structure relation of narrative to ideology and gives example to the multiple levels at which we understand a text.

Textual markers of spatial boundaries and actantial progression through space establish major units of narrative meaning (sequences). The organization of space is shown to reflect the progression and axiological investment of the text, and the important valorization of insideness. Each sequence of the text establishes figurative and axiological investments, as well as actantial relations. They justify a euphoric reading of the text and of many of its signs (Oiseuse, the birds, the fountain in which the Lover gazes), and contravert the recent allegorical readings of Robertson and Fleming. The analysis of actantial relations shows that exchange is focused on three major semiotic axes in the text: the axis of enunciation (between narrator and reader and among textual actants), the axis of the gaze (which allows new readings of the roles of Douz Regarz and Narcissus), and the axis of the gift.

Finally, close analysis of the representations of exchange allows the important role of narrative repetition in a text to surface. For example, the account of how Chastee's guardians came to her aid (2845-2865) is symbolically repeated many times as the Lover tries to win the Rose. The tale thus retells itself in the process of being told. In allegory, this subtle process of repetition makes a text's meaning that much richer, as text becomes metatext to itself.