Silvandre's Symposium: The Platonic and the Ambiguous in L'Astree.

"He is the kind of man that . . . well, if I were a woman, and I were not around, I should be in love with Rick." Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca

"In a word, I admit that if I had been a man, I would have been her suitor, no matter what treatment it may have gotten me." Daphnide in L'Astree(1)

Ambiguity raised to the level of motif is particularly engaging. Wherever it is found - in textual fiction as in cinema - it enjoys the power of riveting an audience and dazzling critics. Perhaps it is because of the thematic depth it brings to a work; perhaps it is the suspenseful uncertainty that is its nature. In either event, ambiguity invites the reader/spectator to explore in his or her mind the thematic road not taken.

But does ambiguity at the level of significant necessarily point to confusion at the level of essence? In the characterization of the film classic Casablanca, for example, the spectator encounters an apparently self-serving and womanizing police captain who studiedly remains in whatever gray area he can find for himself - be it political, moral or even sexual - if every outward sign is to be given credence. This character's thematics are perhaps generally ambiguous enough that, when he exclaims (in speaking of Ilsa), "She was asking about you earlier, Rick, in a way that made me extremely jealous!", the audience may pause at the vagueness of the remark, if only for the briefest of moments. The reason is, of course, that vagueness is perfectly in keeping with his ever-hazy self-representation: this is, after all, a character who explicitly makes a point of sitting on political and legal fences, so why should he be any easier to categorize where sexuality is concerned? In the end, the character's sexuality (like his politics and morals) may be judged to be unequivocal though still he may retain outwardly the aura of the fog into which he disappears - yet it may be the outward imprecision that gives him depth and interest as a character.

The point is that, in a particular thematic framework, abstruseness itself can be an indispensable, suggested model of interpretation rather than the obstacle which criticism may sometimes make of it. Indeed, criticism of Honore d'Urfe's L'Astree (1607-1627) has dwelt long on the motif of ambiguity in signs of gender identification, yet without integrating the notion entirely into a consistent reading strategy that is in concert with the notion of Platonic essence; some work virtually ignores the phenomenon of ambiguity as its problems posit a thematic inconsistency with d'Urfe's Epistres morales (1598-1608) and with a decidedly moralistic reading of his pastoral romance. Now, this is by no means to find fault with the work that has been done on the issue up to this point:(2) instead, this article is intended to build on what consensus there is in the critical assessment of gender identity in L'Astree, and to propose on two grounds a strategy of reading which accommodates the semiotic imprecision of sexual identity that characterizes this intriguing text.

L'Astree is a fictional work of grand scope, peopled with hundreds of characters and set in Merovingian times on the banks of the river Lignon. Its central action, the reconciliation of the shepherd Celadon and his beloved Astree, is put in motion by a misunderstanding which causes Astree to banish Celadon from her sight. Celadon's despair (in attempted suicide) turns to hope under the guidance of the chief druid, Adamas, who prompts the lad to disguise himself as a girl and work his way back into the presence - and favor - of Astree. In so doing, Celadon (who passes the greater part of the narrative disguised as "Alexis") sees his life intertwine with those of myriad shepherds, druids, knights and noble women (nymphes, as they are called in this matriarchal order) who are almost all in search of love and stability. Among them is Silvandre, the orphan and erudite scholar who leads many a Socratic-style dialogue on the nature of love - an ongoing inquiry that engages an entire society's constant intellectual attention. And there is Hylas, the renegade proponent of free love, and the lone, lighthearted foil of the serious discussants in Silvandre's Neoplatonic "Symposium." The pastoral's action weaves the personal and political intrigues of its many characters into a knot whose denouement comes with the challenge to the political status quo mounted by the villains. And as is likely to happen along the way in a pastoral romance, disguise and misunderstanding play havoc with the society's assumptions about identity, sexuality and love.

Critics may disagree in some measure on the motivation and the ultimate meaning of the confusion of sexual identity in L'Astree, but there is a remarkable accord on the evidence itself: the blurring of gender lines, the (generically conventional) lack of visual acuity in seeing through disguises, the impediments to courtship and love relationships, a narrator's overt collaboration in ruses of disguise, all have drawn critical attention to a social conflict within the text having psychological ramifications in the delineation of gender roles and traits. In the absence of scholarly unanimity over the significance of the disorder in gender identity, there is at least a general recognition of its various sorts: transvestism, apparent androgyny, and homosocial affection (often mentioned within the narrative), combining to the effect of general imprecision in the demarcation of the sexes as reliable criteria of identity. And indeed, there is some agreement that the romance's characterization sets forth a broad gray area of androgynous sexual self-representation, distinct from matters of transvestism and homosocial affection, between the two biological genders.

But to what meaningful origins can we trace this evident thematic play at the crossroads of sexual identity in the text? On the one hand, there is, in both the pastoral and comic traditions, a long and rich history of disguise that subsumes the motif of transsexual masking.(3) D'Urfe's debt to earlier pastoral sources - Tasso's Aminta, Guarini's Il Pastor fido, and more particularly Sannazar's Arcadie, Montemayor's Diana and Cervantes's La Galatea - extends not only to thematic issues, but also to the Neoplatonism to which we shall shortly turn; the thematic exploitation of transvestism does not end with d'Urfe as it goes on to inspire Corneille's Clitandre, Jean-Pierre Camus's Herminia ou les deguisements, Mme de Villedieu's Memoires des aventures d'Henriette-Sylvie de Moliere, and L'Heritier's Amazone francoise.(4) So one might be tempted to explain away the game-playing with sexual identity in d'Urfe as mere participation in a literary topos popular in the day. In the case of L'Astree, however, a more informative reading views this ubiquitous motif as the symptom of underlying causes - causes rooted in the characters' understanding of sexuality and in the textual society's uncertainty about signs of gender and a number of other criteria of identification. We shall attempt to account for the complexities of sexual identity in the romance by examining the two aspects of the text that give the process life: the ideological context of Neoplatonism (framed interestingly in a serial Socratic-style dialogue or "Symposium" on the philosophy of love), and the structure of ambiguity that sustains the narrative throughout. In so doing, we shall propose a semiological resolution to critical debate over the sexual identity of character that underlies the outward signs of gender.

The three most influential works in the recent canon of study on L'Astree do indeed examine the motif of imprecision in sexual identity. Jacques Ehrmann, in his seminal and insightful work, identifies the phenomenon but makes of it little more than one of the bases on which rests a social convention of role reversal and codified communication in the pursuit of love.(5) Maxime Gaume is more attentive to the issue's ideological roots and implications, but prefers to treat the motif as support for the text's enactment of the Platonic myth of magnetism; it must be said that this perspective is entirely proper for Gaume's purposes, yet it allots only two paragraphs of his marvelous ouvrage magistral to a subject of significance where sexual identity in the romance is at issue.(6) Much more detailed is the study of Eglal Henein, centered on the broad question of identity in L'Astree; given that the study posits complete thematic continuity between d'Urfe's Epistres morales and his unfinished L'Astree, it seems prudent to examine closely conclusions drawn on premises that trace no thematic distinctions between two texts of demonstrably differing nature and intent, especially as concerns matters of sexuality.(7)

As for the matter of Neoplatonism's influence on d'Urfe in general, and on L'Astree in particular, scholars have long been attuned to its relevance in the thematic plan. The most broadly held idee recue concerning L'Astree is that it incorporates the Renaissance version of Neoplatonism to the same high degree that the rest of European pastoral literature does. Maxime Gaume thoroughly details both d'Urfe's grounding in Plato and the pastoral's own ideological context of Neoplatonism.(8) Roland Antonioli likewise makes an inventory of the principles of Neoplatonism that relate to the thematics of love in d'Urfe and to the sources of l'honnete amitie (proper affection) in pastoral literature.(9) The point at which all this work remains, however, is to enlighten the almost universally recognized code of Platonic love in L'Astree. Even if we note those critical works which look beyond the "usual suspects" either to complement the Platonic influence in L'Astree with more proximate, medieval influence(10) or to argue - if not conclusively - a lesser Platonic influence than is commonly assumed,(11) there remains to study the process of character identification and the thematics of character in the light of Plato's undeniable influence on d'Urfe. Likewise, while recent studies have shed light on baroque writing practices and other conventional forms of textual representation (specifically, emblematics and novelistic innovation(12)), the semiotics of character with respect to sexual self-representation is still yet to be described in its Neoplatonic context in d'Urfe's fiction.

That L'Astree's characters pass the greater part of their time and efforts philosophizing about love's subtleties, and with a decidedly Platonic slant, comes as news to no one even vaguely familiar with pastoral literature of the period; interestingly, that thematic of love draws a correlative in the romance's scheme of character definition. What does it mean to be a woman or a man in this sylvan retreat? Human ontology, where sexual identity is concerned, looks to Plato's fountain of "la verite d'amour" for its reflection. And of course, it is given that this philosophical line of inquiry can be traced through the early-Renaissance intermediaries of Marsilio Ficino, Leone Ebreo, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Pietro Bembo, Mario Equicola, Caviceo, and Castiglione who furnish both the literary and ideological context for the Epistres morales of d'Urfe as well as the Neoplatonic foundation of his pastoral romance.(13)

At the source, the dialogues of Plato themselves offer in numerous places consistent expressions of the ideal of love, but none is more concise or to the point than that in Laws.(14) Here it is proclaimed,

The man whose love is a physical passion, a hunger for another's charms, like that for ripe fruit, tells himself to take his fill and gives not a thought to his minion's state of soul. But he that treats carnal appetite as out of the question, that puts contemplation before passion, he whose desire is veritably that of soul for soul, looks on enjoyment of flesh by flesh as wanton shame;... he will aspire to live with his love in constant purity.... (15)

Such is the ideal, and its message is of course included in the other dialogues which give voice to Plato's thought on love, namely Phaedrus and especially Symposium. Such indeed is the ideal, but never does Plato assume that ideal as a norm for conduct in this world; as with all things, the phenomenon of love in this life of vague and fallible impressions is at best an approximation of the ideal. Reality of life and utopia of thought are clearly distinct from one another; and in reality, passion, sex, infatuation and inconstancy (in both hetero- and homosexual relationships(16)) are spoken of in the Dialogues as accepted facts of life.

This universally understood code of"Platonic" love is obviously prescriptive in the moral makeup of the textual society of L'Astree. Silvandre, the primary theorist/apologist of the code of proper love in the text, holds forth often on the duality of soul and body, and on the superiority of the soul in matters of love. As usual, in response to the clown, the renegade, the harlequin Hylas, Silvandre has made a patient and reasoned expose on the preeminence of the spiritual when his argument culminates in the question, "is it not impossible that he who loves only the body, be loved by it, inasmuch as love can be only in the soul? And hence do you not see, Hylas, that those who love the body, are imitators of the folly of Pygmalion, who fell in love with a piece of marble?"(17)

Above all others, the episode in the text's action which puts into practice this belief of the priority of soul over body in most exemplary fashion is that of Celidee's self-disfigurement: she destroys the perfect beauty of her face in order both to test her suitors' love of her soul, and to draw attention to the beauty of that soul.(18) Certainly, therefore, the text adheres to this Platonic tenet as an ostensible model in the enactment of a philosophy of love.

Our point, however, is that Plato's philosophy of love - with which we know d'Urfe to have been eminently conversant(19) - does not end with the opposition of soul and body, and that its further complexity served as an inspiration to d'Urfe in the construction of a highly complicated thematic of love. In the Symposium, Plato's longest and best known treatment of love, Socrates predictably takes the last word and enunciates the doctrine of love that is commonly recognized as Platonic. It is reported by Socrates as having come intact from a "woman called Diotima - a woman who was deeply versed in this and many other fields of knowledge."(20) But this definitive pronouncement is preceded by other opinions, as each guest offers his understanding of the phenomenon of love; the speech which stands out in most readers' minds is that attributed to the comic playwright, Aristophanes, and it is this one that sheds the most light on the reading of L'Astree.

Maxime Gaume(21) mistakenly attributes to the character Eryximachus this remarkable notion of the fraction complementaire or complementary part;(22) and it is important for the present argument to note that it is in fact the half-comical, half-serious Aristophanes who enunciates the Platonic theory of magnetic attraction in the Symposium. Gaume outlines a thorough inventory of pronouncements on the aimant (magnet) in L'Astree,(23) yet it should not escape notice that the principal source of Platonic doctrine on love - the Symposium - puts the words into the mouth of an ambiguous character like Aristophanes, and into the context of a speech such as his. In a sense, L'Astree mirrors this love debate by putting into the mouth of an outrageous, somewhat comical character (i.e. Hylas) an argument that is at the same time outlandish and yet worthy of some measure of attention in the ongoing discussion. But it is the content of Aristophanes' speech that interests us the most, as its thematics prove to be a model for L'Astree's plan of characterization in the matter of sexual identification.

By way of explaining the phenomenon of love (the charge to each participant in the Symposium dialogue being "to speak to the best of his ability in praise of Love"(24)), Aristophanes launches first into an ontology relating, as he puts it, "the real nature of man, and the change which it has undergone."(25) Here he postulates the existence of not only two primordial genders in humanity, but of a third as well - the hermaphrodite. After an obviously fanciful story of the hermaphrodites' eight-limbed, bisexual form, and Zeus's decision to carve each one in half, Aristophanes arrives at the heart of the matter. According to this history, the heirs of the primordial male and female sexes constitute the modern homosexual and lesbian populations; it is then the halves of the former hermaphrodites, now male and female separately, which search for union with one another again and give rise to the modern heterosexual population. In summation, Aristophanes proclaims for humanity in general, "we are all like pieces of the coins that children break in half for keepsakes - making two out of one, like the flatfish - and each of us is forever seeking the half that will tally with himself."(26)

The first question we must ask at this point is what to make of this account of the comic dramatist Aristophanes, clearly humorous in tone, and part of a dialogue which is generally serious in its consideration of love. On the one hand, one might dismiss it entirely as frivolous, comic relief. But such is not Plato's style in the main: Plato's custom is to include even far-fetched arguments not for their farcical value, but because they contain some grain of reason that bears hearing. Indeed, this argument of Aristophanes gives form to the otherwise serious Platonic doctrine of magnetism in love.(27)

An ensuing question is more important to us: what bearing does this brief episode of the Symposium have on the reading of L'Astree? In fact, its relevance (beyond the fact that it is a basis for the shepherds' optimism on love as each seeks his or her "fraction complementaire") should not at all be lost on the attentive reader of the romance. The conclusion of much of the critical work done on L'Astree (that of Ehrmann and Henein stand out as fine examples) is that the pursuit of love in the pastoral society is a quest encumbered by all sorts of unfavorable circumstances; readers have never failed to note that shepherds and shepherdesses, nymphs and princes alike are all beset by obstacles as they attempt to put into practice the abstractions of the philosophy of love that they continually discuss and refine. Moreover, the same corpus of critical study has noted that communication between the sexes is at best difficult for these characters, and that characters must go to great lengths to effect that communication, including the adoption of transsexual disguise.(28) Nonetheless, critics would agree that Plato's magnetic theory provides a clear and recognizable impetus to the pastoral's characters who do not voice any overt doubt about the existence or attainability of ideal love.

But a divergence of critical opinion has to do not so much with the magnetic principle itself, as with the nature of the underlying sexual identity of character.(29) Difficulties have arisen on the two sides of the critical effort to arrive at a precise understanding of the nature of character and gender identity in this work. A strictly essentialist model (e.g. Henein(30)) does not accord to an obviously central motif all of the dynamism pertaining to it, almost trivializing the socio-psychological implications of a vital textual topos. Likewise, a strictly psychoanalytic model (e.g. Greenberg) finally sidesteps the objection that L'Astree's manifest Neoplatonism comes with a dualism of body and soul which presupposes an essence and, therefore, an identity that is not in flux. To make of the psychoanalytic the sole standard of identity is to deny the text's foundation in metaphysics; to make short shrift of the implications of ambiguity in sexual identification, on the other hand, is to deprive the text of a measure of its meaning.

All sides here cited argue compellingly and eloquently nonetheless, and there may well be some degree of resolution in a clearer definition of the issue. The problematic nature of sexual identity may be not in an ambiguity of character itself, but instead in the communicative signs about the self which characters hold forth to society and to the reader; hence the issue may most productively be phrased not as a psychoanalytic one,(31) but as a semiotic one. In other words, characters, responding to the difficulties before them in the pursuit of love and understanding, find it expedient or even necessary to create a psychic "middle ground" of communication between the genders. I suggest that, given the societal pressures and constraints as the text sets them out, the two sexes are forced to carve out some intermediate zone of self-representation (the term used for our purposes, not to be conflated with the epistemological sense in which James Hembree uses it(32)), free of the prejudices and propensities of the genders as they are customarily understood in the pastoral society, between the male and the female, for the pursuit of love. After all, the Fontaine de la Verite d'Amour (Fountain of the Truth of Love, whose waters would magically show with their reflections if love were mutual) has been rendered useless by a spell, the capstone in a system of barriers between the lover and the beloved: family feuds, social prohibitions, mistaken identities, misunderstanding of spoken and written signs, politics and coincidence, all conspire to make it all but impossible in practice to pursue love across gender lines.

The middle ground may well be a psychic space, an intersection of minds in a metaphysical locus where the body - disguised, misrepresented or even androgynous as it may be argued - does not appear. It is a question, then, not of the form the body takes in rendering spiritual union possible, but of that very possibility itself. Do both the philosophy of love (woven into a social context whose mores are obviously problematic) and the (Platonic) ontology of gendered humankind provide realistically for the marriage of spirits across gender lines? Characters are undaunted and optimistic in their assumptions. Nonetheless they are aware that their social code sets up certain obstacles and certain affinities which, for good or iii, make the fulfillment of love quite impossible for the text's duration.(33) So what means do characters use to overcome the obstacles that gendered society lays before them if, true to their Platonic dualism, they are to disdain the physical in quest of spiritual communion in love? Their first efforts are naturally to make of the body a metaphor of the soul; the facts of physical life in Forez give them some tools. First, androgyny at least appears common among them in the signs they put forward.(34) Second, a conventional and thematic lack of visual acuity renders transvestism a viable disguise. Finally, socially sanctioned homosocial affinities provide channels for human contact that is otherwise either forbidden or awkward or resisted. These three distinct phenomena converge to effect a thematic of ambiguity - albeit ostensibly transitory - in sexual identity which characters (and the narrative) use to great effect.(35)

Despite the foreseeable problematic consequences, characters are happy to embrace the quick solution: things get easier for them in the short run when they craft new sexual identities for themselves. There are attendant benefits as well for "scholars" in this pastoral Symposium of love: Servais Kevorkian points out the advantage for a character like Celadon to have the opportunity to learn femininity by experiencing it and to learn of sexuality by playing an opposite role.(36) So Celadon twice "becomes" a woman in order to be near his beloved Astree (as "Orithie"(37) and later in the long-standing disguise as "Alexis"); Melandre disguises herself as a man to protect her beloved Lydias;(38) other examples of transsexual disguise for the furtherance of the interests of love are plenty. The point is that something happens to make the pursuit of love easier and more effective when members of the two sexes break free from the straits of customarily understood gender identity, and function in a new space of self-representation somewhere between male and female.(39)

Transsexual disguise in L'Astree has the function of assisting communication in the passage across the barrier of physical gender, but it is also the vehicle of experience for the opposite sexuality. Hence it is something more than a mask. While the soul and its properties are unaffected, the body lives in society, and society's semiotic system revolves (as the text would have it) around the understanding its users have of one another.(40) Characters who resort to this mask do, in fact, assume some outward signifier characteristics of the other sex. "Alexis," of course, looks like a shepherdess in every way, "her beauty and whiteness not betraying at all the garb she was donning";(41) but Alexis also takes part in the customary feminine disparagement of masculine character traits.(42) Melandre, for her part, is able (with luck on her side) to fight a seasoned knight to a draw despite her own lack of experience in combat.(43) It is as though the image of a new gender is projected in such cases in the text, an image combining or fusing traits - physical and spiritual - of the two sexes, as though to bring forth characters of androgynous identity who set about the business of achieving their goals.

Plato's "hermaphrodite" from Aristophanes' speech in the Symposium offers a thematic foreshadowing of this "transitory" phenomenon in d'Urfe. The overt suggestion in Aristophanes' words is that the middle gender is the historic explanation for heterosexual attractions in love; the reasonable implication, however, is that there is suggested a kind of magnetism in this love, predicated on an inner empathy - and an impulse toward spiritual union - with the opposite sex.(44) But it is further implied, with the notion of an intermediate gender, that there exists ideally some bridge of self-representation between the sexes, not confined to biological identity of gender, but transcending the corporal in some metaphysical state where the sexes are equal in all senses, that is to say, where they become one.

Is this what Silvandre is getting at when he theorizes repeatedly on the lover "becoming" the beloved?(45) If so, and it seems plausible that this is the logical conclusion to Silvandre's argument, then it would appear that we have found evidence in L'Astree of a particular thematic model in Plato. But furthermore, this suggestion on Plato's part of some sort of transcendent androgynous identity in the metaphysics of love, explicit only in Aristophanes' speech but implicit in Plato's magnetic theory, serves as a model for the motif of construed sexual ambiguity in L'Astree's scheme of gender identity - a motif that has much been on the minds of critics.(46) The correlative is clear: at Plato's suggestion, theorists of love in the Symposium of L'Astree preach a doctrine of "transformation" (e.g. Tircis(47)), and characters take the notion one step further by creating (or exploiting) an area of represented sexuality that is neither male nor female.

Flux in sexual identification at the level of signifier in this text has all the thematic fullness that ambiguity brings to literature, especially in view of the fact that it is not merely a function of a physical disguise or masking of identity. Evidence of the motif goes to many levels of characterization. As concerns physical attribute, the narrative makes much of strong - or even nearly identical - resemblances across sexual lines. The pastoral society seems, for example, to marvel at a physical resemblance between Filandre and his sister Caliree; at public games, "they attracted the stares of most of the assembly" for their similarity of appearance.(48) We are told later that characteristics of Filandre "belied in no way the perfections of a girl"(49) to the point where the man Amidor falls in love with the disguised fellow. And Celadon, who excels among men in sports,(50) bears so great a resemblance to Adamas's daughter Alexis, that the druid himself hatches the plan for Celadon to pass in disguise for Alexis.(51) Biological differences between the sexes, if there are any that serve as markers of identity,(52) are simply no barrier in the game of disguises; given the ease with which characters pass in identity across those lines, we must infer that the genders cannot be greatly far apart in physical attribute at the outset. But by the same token, essence in identity does retain its integrity, as Semire's recognition of Celadon disguised serves to illustrate.(53)

As far as behavior is concerned, characters adopting the transsexual mask have no reported difficulty playing their roles. Imitation of activities reserved for the other sex proves to be no problem for any of them. Filidas, who spends her entire life disguised as a male, learns young "the exercises proper to young shepherd men, to which she adapted herself not at all too badly."(54) Even when no mask is in play, games can point up the ease with which behavior can cross sexual lines: witnessing the role-play of courtship or soings between women, Phillis is quick to ask "if it is the humor of the shepherdesses of Lignon to become fond so quickly, and rather of shepherdesses than of shepherds."(55)

Lastly in the area of the psychology of character, the interplay of gender traits has as much currency as elsewhere. Mitchell Greenberg goes so far as to portray Celadon's situation "... [in] an uncontrollable game of signifiers, a game in which 'he' is lost, Celadon comes up against his own androgyny,... where there is no 'he,' no 'she,' just a play of signifiers, refusing any signified."(56) In Celadon's own interior monologue we encounter the words, "Am I Alexis?... Am I Celadon?... So I am Alexis and Celadon mixed together;"(57) at a point where his own identity becomes confused in his thoughts. And in an interesting exchange of madrigals concerning the love of friendship between women, Daphnis and Diane explicitly break down the psychic barriers of gender in an ostensibly heterosexual milieu, and Diane finishes by saying (in an obvious allusion to Platonic "transformation" in love relationships), "If the lover changes into the beloved / Can I not better change myself / Being a shepherdess, into you, a shepherdess, / Than, being a shepherdess, into a shepherd?"(58) Her implication is that homosocial affinity may be more feasible than the heterosocial, if they are to take seriously the Platonic theory they all preach, but certainly too that there is nothing preventing her as a woman from becoming a woman in the way that a lover "becomes" the beloved.

To ascribe an inspiration to this elaborate motif of flux in gender signs in L'Astree, then, I suggest that Plato's theory of magnetism of souls in love, along with the thematically related figure of the hermaphrodite in the Symposium, provide a model for the semiotics of character in this fictional universe; here woman can meet man in a neutral sexual dimension of interpersonal dealings, having left behind the conventional boundaries of gender that separate them. To measure its meaning within the confines of the text, I turn to the question of ambiguity on the large scale.

While not discounting the importance of social, political and even religious tensions in L'Astree, it is safe to say that love is the central, driving force of action and discussion. "Dramatic" conflict arises from the basic fact that ideal love, for whatever reasons, is practically impossible to achieve between the sexes as they are marked. So if the fulfillment of Platonic love is thwarted, what remains possible in the meantime?

It cannot be said that all expressions of amour, honneste amitie or caresses are repressed in this society; the work of Servais Kevorkian shows well the extent to which eroticism does play out in the text.(59) Eros is frowned upon by the moral spokespersons, but is present nonetheless: Lycidas impregnates Olimpe whom he neither loves nor marries, and his action is lightly dismissed - by Astree, of all people - as a youthful indiscretion.(60) The Platonic ideal of the superiority of ame (soul) over corps (body) may carry the day in debate among these shepherds(61) just as it does in the Symposium of Plato, but eroticism remains a fact of life in both of these texts.

Then, too, there is the permissible display of affection among members of the same sex. They often make a point of sleeping together expressement (purposely)(62) and le plus souvent (most often).(63) Diane speaks of "all the caresses customary among women, where there is friendship and intimacy."(64) Diane, Phillis and Astree exchange flatteries and expressions of jealousy over "affection," and then embrace and kiss "with complete affection."(65) And of course, there is the scene much discussed by readers of L'Astree in which Astree and Alexis (whom Astree takes to be a woman resembling her beloved Celadon) share warm embraces in bed.(66) In spite of explicit moral pronouncements against the practice of homosexuality,(67) apologies and defenses are made for appearances of it,(68) and members of the same sex feel at the very least uninhibited in displaying affection for one another. This pre-existing channel of contact is, in fact, what makes transsexual disguise so appealing for lovers who resort to it: it offers them a permissible, open link of affectionate communication to exploit.

In passing we should note that critical study of this aspect of the text has occasionally been selective in its scope. Henein and Zuerner, perhaps for different reasons, have taken the same tack of playing up the fact that "Alexis" is really a man in bed with Astree, pursuing the socially sanctioned heterosexual interests. Yet both play down the fact that Astree, for her part, is quite convinced that she is receiving ardent affections from another woman. Ignoring Astree's complicity, whether to explain it away for reasons of textual exigency (saying, in essence, "A kiss is just a kiss...")(69) or to exclude it from a socio-psychological model of interpretation which it iii fits,(70) is in effect ignoring a significant ambiguity in sexual self-representation. The fact is that homosocial affinity profits from clear social sanction, and when it is combined with the traits of gender identity in flux as discussed above, signs point to a pattern of semiotic ambiguity developing in the evidence before us.

Were this the only anomalous component in an otherwise perfectly consistent and orderly text (and here I point up the risks of grouping the Epistres morales together with the pastoral romance for study), we might find it a curiosity, out of place, a flaw in the diamond from which the chief druid Adamas would take his Latin name. But scholars have for some time called critical attention to structures of ambiguity in aspects of the romance as disparate as ideology,(71) behavioral anomaly,(72) and artistic representation within the text.(73) Hence the attentive reader of L'Astree takes into account that there is an entire structure of representational ambiguity underlying the remarkable qualities of gender identification as I have set them forth: essences may not be in flux, but their outward depiction is most often unclear, in keeping with the Platonic dualism of soul and body, of ideal world and physical world. For purposes of illustrating this point, I shall choose three different levels of the text's composition and show a pattern of ambiguous signifiers on each: the level of thematics, the sociology of the fictional world, and the text's characterization. In so doing I shall bring into evidence a structure of recurring ambiguity that takes on the aspect of a thematic constant, corroborating my findings up to this point.

1) The love debate. Having already recognized love - both the subject of discussion among these philosophical shepherds, and the romantic interest in the action - as the central issue on the thematic level of the text, we should look here first for evidence to support our argument. And in light of the fact that the text-long discussion of love provides the "theater"(74) in which the characters perform the most, clearly the issue is germane to the study of the semiotics of self-representation in L'Astree. It would seem logical to turn to the figure of the renegade, Hylas, the lone proponent of libertine love among Platonists; in fact, it is interesting to note in passing that, while no one really takes his extreme views seriously, often enough his charges are not argued down in the discussion for one reason or another. But at any rate, we look instead to the heart of the Symposium, the ongoing colloquy among the society's thinkers and moralists. Two of these stand out.

Silvandre is the most evident and most verbose exponent of the code of proper love. The druid Adamas, who poses as an authority on all things important (and who, as it is broadly hinted throughout the text, will turn out to be Silvandre's father) also speaks on the matter of love. The curious thing is that the two do not entirely agree philosophically on the matter; and while they never confront one another on their differences, they do preach differing messages. The druid offers a theocentric ontology of love, arguing that divine creation of the universe calls first for love of the deity; in this view, the love of God takes precedence over romantic love.(75) Silvandre's view, however, is anthropocentric, holding that the lover must believe all things very perfect in the person beloved whom he is to love above all else in the universe,(76) since love is its own center, "and never has a design which does not begin and end in it."(77)

While both these pundits hold predictably to the harmony of true love with reason, there is disagreement as to the role reason plays in love. Adamas urges that one marry "not at all by love, but by reason,"(78) and that reason is guided by "l'intelligence de la planete" (akin to Plato's theory of magnetism discussed above) to arrive at an image of the ideal beloved.(79) Silvandre, on the other hand, holds that reason guides the conduct of love, but is not the locus of that love; hence he argues that one should love extremement or extremely, surpassing the individual's will and implicitly undermining the rational basis of love.(80)

Furthermore, there is discord over the moral status of love. Adamas, like all those who espouse the heroic code of values, extols love's salutary nature. But this does not deter him from comment on its possible negative effects;(81) it is he who points out the trahisons or treachery of love(82) and often characterizes Cupid as dangerous. Love is thus portrayed by Adamas as a two-sided phenomenon whose positive and negative manifestations share the same substance, but are of different moral value. Silvandre, on the other hand, speaks only of true love and relegates anything else in the discussion to the standing of outrecuidances or presumptuousness, as his many discussions with Hylas attest. For Silvandre, love, that "sympathie" of souls, is pure and good by definition and can have no ill effects.

Finally, it is worthwhile to note under this rubric two other sets of conflicting signs. One, having to do directly with the theater of self-representation in the text, has Silvandre concurring with a condemnation of "the finesse and trickery" of role-playing in the love intrigues,(83) while it is of course Adamas who (not entirely without self-interest(84)) concocts the scheme of the grand Celadon/Alexis disguise in the first place, and defends the notion of role-playing and disguise,(85) Another contradiction is within the character of Silvandre himself, who preaches that love and jealousy are mutually exclusive,(86) and who shortly thereafter falls victim to jealousy in love.(87)

So, a heroic code of love may presuppose a degree of unanimity and consistency, but disagreements and anomalies do season the open discussion of it. If there is one character whom we are to take as the embodiment of the perfect beloved, it must be Astree herself; yet she is given to jealousy and rash decisions, and she overtly contradicts herself by banishing Celadon for suspected inconstancy and then arguing for Lycidas's pardon on the same score.(88) Indeed in this text-long discussion on love, the model of a dialogue of Plato springs to mind: the matter and tenor of debate are similar, and characters are willing even to forgo a firm resolution as they continue their open-ended search for an immutable, if abstract and elusive, truth.

2. The social order. On the heroic side of the struggles portrayed in L'Astree, characters take seriously their moralists' charge to preserve the integrity of the social order. Clearly, characters are expected to be as they are born, and any attempts to subvert this order are frowned upon. Adamas praises Celadon for his remarks against the "ambition" of social climbing.(89) And yet, the queen's daughter Galathee finds it in her own interest to argue repeatedly in defense of misalliance,(90) and she urges the shepherd Celadon to aspire to social advancement.(91) How could there be such a contradiction about social priorities (and this is certainly not the romance's only example) in a work where the fixed order of the universe is an integral part of the heroic code?

Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that society, apparently well ordered and stable, has actually been reorganized by a protocol less clearly defined than appearances give to believe. The shepherds of Lignon are not really shepherds at all, but descendants of lofty nobility which abdicated its status in exchange for the peace of a bucolic retreat.(92) The present-day nobles, for their part, voice discontentment with the pomp and "vanitez" of their state.(93) Hence we see shepherds who are really nobles under the skin, and nobles who really want to be shepherds; and the confusion is only compounded by the ease with which disguise enables characters to jump the already unsteady barriers of social caste. Nonetheless, confusion in the signifiers of social rank does nothing to realign heroic values, as all characters who espouse those values devote themselves to the cause of maintaining the socio-political status quo of the land. But if order is not what it appears to be on the surface, it is safe to assert that the ambiguity we have found in other areas of the text's grand representational scheme is mirrored as well in the society's understanding of itself as it reads signs of social identity.

3. Characterization. Ambiguity is again no uncommon trait in the depiction of character background and identity. The uncertainty marking the thematic of love debate and the confusion in the depiction of social structure find their reflection as well on the level of characterization, as a pattern of ambiguity in signifiers continues to unfold before us. Here as elsewhere, signs of identity prove unreliable. On the level of character identity, some figures turn out to be other than they have been thought to be: Paris, for example, is not the son of Adamas as is believed; and there are broad hints throughout the romance that it is Silvandre who will be revealed to be that long-lost son of the druid. The story of Rosileon shows a character who, when kidnapped as a child, loses his real identity (Celiodante), takes the name of Kinicson only to become Rosileon after losing that identity.(94) And of course, the remarkable ruse of disguise enables characters to forge new identities or to play on old ones, with the most startling of results. With character biography and identity not clearly understood, society and reader alike can never be sure with whom they are dealing, and so goes on the structural pattern of ambiguity which the text chooses for itself.

I have appealed to this sequence of structural traits in L'Astree for the sole purpose of validating a point: along with the surmised order and clarity, there is uncertainty in the world of the romance. If any one of the quirks just cited stood alone in the text, it would stand as an anomaly, an eccentric feature in an otherwise well-ordered work. But these taken together, and especially in conjunction with our findings in the question of gender identity, point to a pattern of structure in the text. Ambiguity - not in essence but in self-representation - is a structuring device in L'Astree, the basis on which the textual society represents itself, and the premise upon which the narrative is related. To realize this is to elicit a reading of the text that accounts for signs of a society caught up in the task of identifying itself, caught up in the complicated matter of defining love and understanding the relationship between the sexes. What makes most sense, then, is a reading of this work that is sensitive to the social and political tension underlying the apparent tranquility of the pastoral setting and belying the image of order and uniformity which characters themselves try to project. Of less significance in this view would be the myth of bucolic retreat from reality; in its stead would stand the attention deservedly paid to the textual facts of life: characters in an imperfect world left to long for the perfection of the ideal plane, intrusion by villainous forces (Polemas, et al.) upon a supposed preserve protected by the gods, cultural tension between Gallic and Roman influences, conflicting signs within the social hierarchy, the earmarks of Christian theology found in this society's druidic lore, the mounting patriarchal pressure against the matriarchal order of this land of Marcilly, and so on.

Of Honore d'Urfe himself, Antoine Adam says, "If, when he holds forth, he is Silvandre, no doubt he is, in the course of his life, the model of his charming and fickle Hylas."(95) And yet, in spite of the romantic inclinations of his youth, this is still the author of Epistres morales. The complex masterwork of so complex a writer certainly calls for a reading which takes stock of its richness of ambiguity: identity, like love, is no simple matter here.

GETTYSBURG COLLEGE 

1 D'Urfe, 3:167: "Bref, j'advoue que si j'eusse este homme, je l'eusse servie, quelque traittement que j'en eusse peu recevoir." All English translations in this article are by the author.

2 I refer especially to Jacques Ehrmann, and to the enlightening work of Mitchell Greenberg, Eglal Henein, Twyla Meding, and Servais Kevorkian.

3 See Adam, 1:121-32, and Gaume, 505-648. The motif itself, of course, dates back to the ancient romances of Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius, Chariton, Longus, Appeleus and Petronicus.

4 Adrienne Zuerner brings these later seventeenth-century texts to critical light in a most thought-provoking way. Likewise she does us the great favor of describing in detail the issues of transvestism and gender identification in seventeenth-century France, giving a real-world correlative to the issues at work in fiction (1-24).

5 Ehrmann, 20-26.

6 Gaume, 472-73.

7 See Henein in its entirety, but especially 147-354. As concerns d'Urfe's Epistres morales, while the stoicism of the first volume gives way to the Platonism we recognize in his pastoral, it must be said that the Epistres are not endowed with the dynamism of fiction or the literary background of the pastoral romance; hence while there is a degree of thematic continuity between the two works, it must be allowed that there are different forces at work in the unfolding of L'Astree's narrative than in the largely philosophical discourse of the Epistres. In the main, the epistles of d'Urfe ground a human ontology in cabalistic and Platonic thought, from which premises the writer crafts a metaphysics of love familiar to readers of L'Astree, but which also never strays far from divine origin. As Adam sums up the Epistres (1:116), they set a preferred philosophy of love, heroism and enthusiasm in opposition to a philosophy of reason, prudence and mediocrity, especially rejecting under the latter rubric the "golden mean" of Aristotle.

8 Gaume, 437-503.

9 Antonioli, 69-80.

10 See Saly.

11 See Aragon who builds on the argument of M. Magendie, 21, 205, and 230.

12 See Judovitz and Hinds.

13 See Gaume, 438-50, for thorough documentation of this contextualization of Neoplatonism in d'Urfe.

14 Numerical references made hereafter to the works of Plato cite the conventional marginal sigla notations of the 1578 edition of Plato by Henri Estienne (Stephanus), not page numbers. The edition used for reference here is that of Edith Hamilton, et al.

15 Plato, Laws, 837c.

16 For example Symposium, 181 c-185c.

17 D'Urfe, 3:51-52: "... n'est-il pas impossible que celuy qui n'ayme que le corps, en soit aime, d'autant que l'amour peut estre seulement en l'ame? Et par la ne vois-tu pas, Hylas, que ceux qui aiment le corps, sont imitateurs de la folie de Pigmalion, qui devint amoureux d'un marbre?"

18 D'Urfe, 2:435-53.

19 See Gaume, 86-89.

20 Plato, Symposium, 201d.

21 Gaume, 472.

22 Plato, Symposium, 191d.

23 Gaume, 472-74.

24 Plato, Symposium, 177d.

25 Ibid., 189d.

26 Ibid., 191 d.

27 See Gaume, 470-73, for example.

28 See Ehrmann, 20 and 74, for example.

29 On the one side, scholars (principal among them, Henein and, on different grounds, A. E. Zuerner, 30-64) argue a clear, gendered, essentialist sexual identity of character; conversely, others (Greenberg in toto, Louise Horowitz, 110-17, Twyla Meding, 268-69 and 329-31, and Maurice Lever, 61) hold for a fundamentally androgynous nature of character.

30 See Henein, 278-79 and 301-15.

31 It is interesting to note that Greenberg and Zuerner both discuss sexuality in L'Astree from the psychoanalytic perspective, embarking upon consideration of the issue of castration (compare Greenberg, 1990, 12, or 1987, 172, with Zuerner, 7) and arriving at quite opposite conclusions. See all of Greenberg's cited works, and Zuerner, 43-64.

32 Hembree speaks of self-representation with respect to object-centered versus subject-centered epistemological paradigms as they vied, by his account, for dominance during the baroque era (1-51). The conflict in d'Urfe on which Hembree focuses is hence manifested in the mutually opposing responses of traditionalists and progressives in the pastoral society to the ideological clash between medieval and (emerging) Cartesian epistemological models. "Self-representation" in the present study refers in a more limited sense to sexual identity and the signs which characters use to demarcate it, and the argument I make here could well be incorporated into the line of Hembree's reasoning which ascribes semiological debate and discord in L'Astree to an ongoing paradigm shift in the baroque era. To be sure, my common ground with Hembree is his conclusion that hero and heroine pass beyond the epistemological/ontological debate to a resolution which Hembree characterizes as baroque (and which I have identified, in more limited scope, as a function of the suspension of the rules of the society's gender demarcation). However, given the clear lineage (proximate and remote as outlined above) of Platonism in d'Urfe, and in the absence of any other evident ideological current visible in the romance, this author is more willing than Hembree to recognize it as the primary foundation of ontological discussion in the text, and less willing to accept the premise that "those institutions and discourses [of the pastoral society] are historically relative and culturally produced, rather than providentially established reflections of a transcendent, metaphysical reality" (Hembree, 4). Hembree is to be lauded for the scope of his vision as he frames the dialectical nature of L'Astree's love debates (128-48) and for his sensitive reading of Celadon's quest for identity (215-47). This author does find Greenberg's reading of the "Alexis" disguise (Greenberg, 1987) more compelling than Hembree's depiction of an identity split between the old and new orders (Hembree, 247-52), thought-provoking though the latter is.

33 Mitchell Greenberg, in all works cited, proceeds on the assumption that the realization of the love relationship would be tantamount to the conclusion of the text, and hence remains fleetingly elusive.

34 See Greenberg, 1987.

35 Ibid., 176. My use of the term "transitory" is informed by Greenberg's point that such ambiguity holds sway for the duration of the narrative.

36 Kevorkian, 1991, 44.

37 D'Urfe, 1:114.

38 Ibid., 1:459-70.

39 Mitchell Greenberg studies the dynamics of what he judges to be androgyny among the lovers in this pastoral's society from a psychoanalytic perspective. He argues well that the men of L'Astree must sublimate their desire and submit to the refusal of women (in his terms, castration); hence the need for men to change into a form less "other" to women, and to "become" women through vestimentary as well as behavioral disguise (1987, 172). Greenberg's ultimate inference - that identity is in such constant flux as to disappear as a means of differentiation (see all Greenberg's cited works, especially 1990, 8-13) - may seem too far-reaching in light of the text's evident Neoplatonism; clearly, for Plato the masking of the body would have no bearing in the grand scheme on the spiritual or on a metaphysical property of identity, unless "identity" is construed purely as a function of the psychoanalytic. Nonetheless there is a thematic solution of this matter in what Greenberg labels the "re-union of the Androgyne," (1987, 176) a notion very close to Plato's theory of magnetism. On this general matter, see both Greenberg, 1987 in toto, and 1992, 1-47. See also his 1990, 16-21.

40 I may have stated starkly the case for the integrity of the underlying identity of character (see Gregorio, 1992, 36-40) but never intended to understate the dynamism of the motif of ambiguity in the social understanding of markers of identity. To the contrary, the point of the chapter in the cited work on "General Inferences on Disguise" (63-72) is to call attention to the fact that society in L'Astree, in pursuit of the Platonic truth of "etre," is constrained to pass through a life of illusions, fleeting impressions, misconceptions and half-truths - circumstances which give flux to life in society, and at the same time give life to the narrative.

41 D'Urfe, 3:593: "... sa beaute et sa blancheur ne dedisans point l'habit qu'elle prenoit.... "Note the narrator's participation in the game with the use of feminine pronouns to refer to Celadon in his disguise as the young woman Alexis.

42 Ibid., 3:562.

43 Ibid., 1:465.

44 While I disagree with Zuerner's premise that transvestism and role-playing entail no adoption of the traits of the opposite gender in this pastoral romance, I agree with her conclusion that the text does ratify the primacy of marriage (37-39).

45 For example, d'Urfe, 2:263: "... mais si vous disiez qu'en aymant Diane, je me transforme en elle, vous diriez fort bien." (... but if you said that by loving Diane, I transform myself into her, you would be speaking very accurately.)

46 See Gaume, 472-73, Ehrmann, 22-26, Henein, 292-315, and Greenberg, to name a few. The argument of Eglal Henein arrives at the conclusion that sexual ambiguity (aided by travestissement) ends up validating traditional sexuality (315); for individuals, this may be borne out, and sexual ambiguity may be dismissed as mechanical and without further semiotic or socio-sexual implications. The problem is that not all individuals are so easily classified, and societal/communal thought does not process the matter so expeditiously. The work of Mitchell Greenberg seems more closely attuned to the dynamics of this motif.

47 D'Urfe, 2:263.

48 Ibid., 1:199: "ils retenoyent sur eux les yeux de la plus grande partie de l'assemblee."

49 Ibid., 1:212: "ne dementoient en rien les perfections d'une fille."

50 Ibid., 1:44 and 114.

51 Ibid., 2:397.

52 Here we might note the concern of Alexis over "le deffaut de son sein" (the lack in her breast) in disguise (d'Urfe, 3:249), or the complementary concern over "ce qu'elle portoit au bas" (that which she was carrying below) (3:548).

53 Ibid., 4:801-02.

54 Ibid., 1:197: "les exercices propres aux jeunes bergers, ausquels elle ne s'accommodoit point trop mal."

55 D'Urfe, 3:247: Phillis asks Diane, referring to Astree, "si c'est l'humeur des bergeres de Lignon de s'affectionner si promptement, et plustost des bergeres que des bergers." 56 Greenberg, 1987, 175.

57 D'Urfe, 4:252: "Suis-je Alexis?... Suis-je Celadon?... Je suis donc et Alexis et Celadon meslez ensemble."

58 D'Urfe, 1:202: "Si l'amant en l'aime se change, / Ne puis-je pas mieux me changer, / Estant bergere en vous bergere, / Qu'estant bergere en un berger?"

59 Though the conclusions in Kevorkian, 1987 do not seem to take into account the full dynamics of disguise in L'Astrele, the critical attention afforded love and sexual ambiguity there is rewarding.

60 D'Urfe, 1:135-37.

61 For example, d'Urfe, 3:51.

62 Ibid., 3:15, for example.

63 Ibid., 2:144. This episode involves two males, where Zuerner, 57, would lead to believe that no such homosocial channeling (with homoerotic overtones) obtains among males in the text.

64 D'Urfe, 1:212; Diane refers to "toutes les caresses qu'entre femmes on a de coustume, je veux dire entre celles, ou il y a de l'amitie et de la privaute" (all the customary caresses among women, I mean among those where there are friendship and intimacy).

65 Ibid., 2:88: "avec une ... entiere affection" to the point where Silvandre, who witnesses the scene, wishes he were Astree "pour recevoir telles faveurs au nom de qui que ce fust" (to receive such favors under the name of anyone at all).

66 Ibid., 3:598-99. A similar scene takes place later, 4:266-67.

67 Ibid., 3:509.

68 Ibid., 3:499, for example.

69 As in Henein, 330-33.

70 As in Zuerner, 63, or to some extent, Hembree, 255-56. In a similar vein, Servais Kevorkian's suggestion, "Astree a en face d'elle Celadon, mais ne pouvant mettre en doute la parole d'Adamas elle accepte l'idee que c'est une jeune fille: l'amour et la pudeur sont egalement satisfaits; elle peut donc exprimer ses sentiments sans aucune retenue" (Astree has Celadon before her, but with the impossibility of putting the word of Adamas in doubt, she accepts the idea that it is a girl: love and decency are equally satisfied; hence she can express her feelings without any restraint), is not convincing (1991, 177).

71 See the cited work of C. Cherpack, an offprint of which was presented to me as a graduate student in 1979, with the inscription, "It is always a pleasure to greet a prospective member of the 'I-Can't-Believe-I-Read-the-Whole-Astree Club."

72 See Ehrmann, 35-36 and 72, for example.

73 Meding, 249-302. This work, in its study of anamorphic painting and trompe l'oeil, shows a structure of ambiguity in the verbal representation of art within the text.

74 See Ehrmann, 108 and Zuerner, 31-33 for a discussion of the motif of theater explicit and implicit in the text.

75 D'Urfe, 3:217-18. See Gregorio, 1982, for a discussion of this matter.

76 D'Urfe, 2:388.

77 Ibid., 2:262: "... et n'a jamais dessein qui ne commence et finisse en luy."

78 Ibid., 1:194: "non point par amour, mais par raison."

79 Ibid., 3:263-64.

80 Ibid., 1:287.

81 Ibid., 1:451-52, for example.

82 Ibid., 1:379, for example.

83 Ibid., 4:92: "les finesses et les tromperies."

84 See ibid., 3:24 where Adamas's happiness is linked by an Oracle to Celadon's marriage with Astree.

85 See ibid., 3:497. Here Adamas defends disguise while ratifying the essence of identity on which the social order is supposed to be built.

86 Ibid., 2:94.

87 Ibid., 2:122-23.

88 Ibid., 1:137.

89 Ibid., 1:381.

90 Ibid., 1:438, for example.

91 Ibid., 1:102.

92 Ibid., 1:48 and 2:311.

93 Ibid., 1:284, for example.

94 Narrated, finally, in ibid., 4:635-44.

95 Adam, 1:115: "Si, quand il disserte, il est Sylvandre, il est, dans le courant de la vie, il est, n'en doutons pas, le modele de son charmant et volage Hylas."

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