Narratives of erotic desire and discourses on desire: from discord to concord

Abstract

In this study narratives of erotic desire written in different periods of history are examined in terms of their relationship with the dominant discourses of desire of their time. The psychoanalytical approach to desire as theorized by Lacan is chosen to constitute the framework for the analysis of both the discourses and narratives of desire. It is argued that so long as desire was subservient to the dominant idealist philosophies until the mid-nineteenth century, narratives of desire had an antagonistic relationship with these discourses. However, when erotic desire became the center of attention and the repression over it began to be alleviated, the antagonistic attitude gave way to mutual dialogue and elaboration. In the first part of the study, in order to demonstrate the antagonism between the narratives and discourses of desire, Petronius’ Satyricon, Boccacio’s Decameron and Cleland’s Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure or Fanny Hill are read with reference to the idealist philosophies of the Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, respectively. In the second part, how Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Ballard’s Crash and Acker’s Great Expectations and Don Quixote respond to and elaborate on the discourses of desire as advocated by Freud, Deleuze and Guattari, and French feminist critics Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva, respectively, are discussed. It has been shown that the writers discussed in both parts of the study used erotic desire as a narrative tool to comment on the prevalent discourse of their time.|Keywords: erotic desire, Lacanian psychoanalysis, desire in literature, desire in philosophy, desire in psychoanalysis, psychoanalytical criticism.