ABSTRACT

Part of my project on literary form in translation, this article stages a dialogue between, on the one hand, the formal and stylistic qualities of medieval literary French prose in the first half-century of its practice, and, on the other, Roland Barthes’s essays on zero-degree writing and on photography. French literary prose, which came to the fore suddenly around 1200 ce, presents itself as an impoverished form of writing lacking the vividness and drama of the well-established verse narration. Why, then, did it enjoy international success? The same question may be asked of early photography, self-evidently so much poorer than painting. Barthes helps us to see how a deliberate “loss of color” helps to generate a new vision of the world — which, for early French prose, was linked to the idealism and violence of crusading. Conversely, reading the utopian Le Degré zero de l’écriture and, especially, the melancholic La Chambre claire alongside medieval Grail romances helps us to see how the quest for an (envisaged or lost) ideal inspires both, and to understand the role of form and the impetus for renewal in Barthes’s final published essay.

摘要

作为我的文学形式翻译项目的一部分，本文进行了一场对话，一方面是中世纪法国文学散文在其实践的前半个世纪中的形式和风格品质，另一方面是罗兰巴特的关于零度写作和摄影的论文。法国文学的散文，其中脱颖而出突然约1200 CE, 表现为一种贫乏的写作形式，缺乏成熟的诗歌叙述的生动性和戏剧性。那么，它为什么在国际上取得成功呢？同样的问题可能会被问到早期的摄影，不言而喻，比绘画差得多。巴特帮助我们了解故意“失去色彩”如何有助于产生对世界的新视野——对于早期的法国散文来说，这与十字军东征的理想主义和暴力有关。相反，阅读乌托邦式的Le Degré zero de l'écriture，尤其是忧郁的La Chambre claire以及中世纪的圣杯罗曼史有助于我们了解对（设想的或丢失的）理想的追求如何激发两者，并理解形式的作用以及巴特最后发表的论文中更新的动力。