Pauline O’Callaghan – Courtly Love to Courtney Love – Still No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship
 
THE LETTER 33 (Spring 2005) pages 22-35
 
Lacan’s references to courtly love in his twentieth seminar Encore of 1972-73 may seem intriguing and anachronistic at first. What can be the relevance of a medieval code of morals, which quite possibly was merely a literary movement, to the problems and difficulties of the relations between the sexes in the twentieth century, relations which, according to Lacan in seminar XX, are not working out? Lacan also wrote extensively about courtly love in his Ethics seminar of 1959-60. I propose to look at the issue of courtly love and some of the theories about its significance, and to ask what its appeal was for Lacan, and what relevance, if any, it has for us now in attempting to understand the issues raised in Seminar XX, issues such as love, desire, limits and feminine jouissance.