Troilus and Cressidaにおける「解釈学的コード」と「象徴のコード」について

The Hermeneutic Code and the Symbolic Code of Troilus and Cressida

Nakamura Hirohide

広島大学文学部紀要

The Hiroshima University Studies Faculty of Letters

In the history of the criticism of Troilus and Cressida, the "disunity" of the play or "discrepancies" in the play have often been the center of discussion. In this paper, the present writer maintains that discrepancies in the play can be ascribed to the different functions played by the hermeneutic code and the symbolic code of the play. The two codes are defined in R. Barthes's S/Z, which shows that the enigma of Zambinella, a castrated singer, is encoded in the hermeneutic code, and the process of castration is encoded in the symbolic code. Thus the two codes deal with relatively the same subject in Balzac's Sarrasine. But in the present play, the outcome of Trojan War is encoded in the hermeneutic code of the play, whereas the symbolic code encodes the destructive working of the "will" (meaning sexual desire, selfishness, wilfulness, and so on) among almost all the characters. The hermeneutic code alludes to the defeat of the Trojans, particularly in II. ii, where Hector is not able to repress the desire of Troilus to continue the war and decides on the continuance of the war, which results in the defeat of the Trojans. The code also alludes to the victory of the Greeks in their successful supression of the wilful behaviour of Ajax and Achilles for the sake of a public end, viz. victory. But in the fifth act the audience is almost unable to conjecture the outcome of the war because in that act they see nothing but the disorderly behaviour of people of the both camps. This fact often causes critical embarrassment and is cited as a problematic aspect of the play. The present writer maintains that the fifth act represents the working of the "will" on almost all the characters, which is encoded in the symbolic code. The discrepancies in the play are, thus, ascribed to different functions of the two codes working in the play.

English and American literature [ 930 ]

jpn

広島大学文学部

[ISSN] 0437-5564

[NCID] AN00213701