ABSTRACT
Narcissism is most often taken to be synonymous with a short-circuiting of love misdirected not to the other, the beloved, but rather to an illusory image merely of oneself. The Narcissus thematics of the Roman de la rose reflect upon its lyric poetics and disclose parallel structures of self-reflexivity. The world of the Garden is a reflection of narcissistic subjectivity: the whole world perceived through one’s own love becomes a reflection of oneself. The lyric mode asks to be read as the linguistic equivalent of what narcissism is in the sphere of affective psychology. The inherent narcissism of courtly love is evident early on in the tradition, for example, in Bernart de Ventadorn’s seeing himself in his lady’s eyes. To be sure, the world of the Garden itself reads as a narcissistic projection, a correlative image of the self-reflexive subject. Narcissism, in the broad sense of self-reflexivity, is a necessary and universal structure of any coherent world.
