Throughout the courtly love tradition (better called the fin'amors tradition), the word sorplus is a powerful code for all forms of excess, most especially orgasm. It is used to suggest the ineffable joie that comes with the access as well as excess of love. (It is jouissance before Lacan dreamed he had invented it.) It is also a term of economics, materialism, and ethics as well. I propose to examine sorplus in a wide selection of European texts from Virgil to Shakespeare and to attempt to contextualize certain key questions. Among them, what kind of excess is poetry? Is there a vocabulary that can adequately describe the relationship between the sorplus of poetry and the sorplus of eros? Why does sorplus seem transgressive? What changes in the understanding of the erotic body parallel changes in the understanding of poetry as a form of knowledge? What is the relationship between pornography and erotica in the early modern period? On these and related questions we will bring to bear various theories and theorists, but we will be primarily concerned with how medieval and early modern writers were themselves already theorizing these questions and their implications.
All readings will be in translation, but we will have access to the originals as well.
Students will be expected to present a seminar report and to write a term paper for the course.