The Space of Epistemology in Marie de France's 'Yonec'

Abstract

Marie de France's twelfth-century lai 'Yonec' offers a model of epistemology in which knowledge entails acts of forgetting over space. Through the course of its narrative, 'Yonec' exposes the limitations inherent in deriving knowledge from static memorials. It chooses instead an expansive and dynamic epistemology in which forgetting -experienced in the movement across space -leads to deeper forms of memory and knowledge than are possible in static memorials alone. The lai's understanding of knowledge relies not only upon the symbolic space of the mind, but also upon the material and political space of its Celtic world. 'Yonec' responds to Henri Lefebvre's caution to consider the material exigencies of space when attempting to use it conceptually or metaphorically. In acknowledging the role of space's materiality in its symbolic meanings, 'Yonec' also offers a suggestive perspective on forgetting and knowing as spatial, rather than temporal, processes.