sleeping, outward deportment and the most basic of bodily functions are
modeled after the courtier’s environment, in particular the prince on whose
word he hangs, and desire is alienated in imitation. Here too, the narrator’s
desire seems not to be his own–rather, he is afflicted with the desire to desire.
But than I thoughte I wolde not dwell behynde;
Amonge all other I put myselfe in prece. ( 43 – 44 )The unanchored“I”is now dropped into a mercantile milieu of objects and
exchanges. Their value is defined in the language and register offin amour,
as the throng of lover-merchants converge on thefigure of a lady called
Dame Sans-Pere:
Than sholde ye see there pressynge in a pace
Of one and other that wolde his lady see,
Whiche sat behynde a traves of sylke fyne,
Of golde of tessew the fynest that myghte be,
In a trone whiche fer clerer dyde shyne
Than Phebus in his spere celestyne,
Whoos beaute, honoure, goodly porte,
I have to lytyll connynge to reporte. ( 56 – 63 )The lady’s“traves of sylke fyne”resembles theintegumentumof allegory,^30
so returning us to the prologue’s talk of“clokynge.”Suchfigures evoke the
multiple readings of allegorical interpretation of Scripture and of classical
writings. Augustine had lastingly influenced such interpretation with his
formulation of the dual-level reading of Scripture in theDe doctrina
christiana, which relegates to the condition of“carnal”slavery those who
enjoy the seductive pleasures of the sign without recognizing that it should
be“used”to spiritual ends.^31 The trope had found its way into curial satire,
where Chartier had identified courtiers as collective nominalists:“allewaye
emonge vs courtyours enfayned / we folowe more the names of thoffyces /
than the droytes and ryghtes / we be verbal / or ful of wordes / and desyre
more the wordes than the thynges”( 10 ). InL’Abuzé en courtthe deluded
hero’s predicament is caused by a failure to read rhetoricalfigures correctly.
His false guide Abuz personifies Time for him,^32 and as a result he fails to
notice the passage of real time until it is too late. The Courtfinally tells
l’Abuzé that those ruined by court life are left with the mere image of what
they desired to gain from it, which they can retain as a warning (“Du bien de
quoy sont desserviz / Lafigure ont pour defiance”).
Other commentaries are still more equivocal about what might lie behind
the allegorical veil. The Roman philosopher and grammarian Macrobius
recounts an anecdote in which his Greek forerunner Numenius proves that to
The Bowge of Courteand the paranoid subject 49