ABSTRACT
In the medieval Latin poem Semiramis, entry into language is represented as mourning: a subject’s confrontation with lack, loss, and absence at the limit of selfhood. Semiramis is a predominantly mournful treatment of the story of entry into language: the acquisition of self and language told in images of grief, sorrow, and powerlessness. The exchange between Semiramis and Tolumnius that forms the center of the poem goes into great detail about the formalities of Tolumnius’ magical incantations. Triumph over loss in Semiramis, just like triumph over castration in the Prioress’s Tale, is possible only by working through the symbolic to emerge on its other side into a space both stable and unstable. Robert Henryson poem is also a story of loss and recuperation which emphasizes both the central-ity of symbolics for the successful working through of mourning and the need for a decisive final balancing of symbolic and semiotic.
