Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:33:35.741Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rabelais, Misogyny, and Christian Charity: Biblical Intertextuality and the Renaissance Crisis of Exemplarity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

François Rigolot
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Renaissance symbolic representations of gender identity and sexual difference appear firmly grounded in the medieval and Neoplatonic misogynist tradition, no matter how unacceptable the terms of that tradition may be to modern sensibility. In Rabelais's works the exemplarity of Christian humanist discourse often coincides with what today is considered profoundly disturbing behavior. The recurrence of trickery, obscenity, and violence against women does not seem to bother the Rabelaisian narrator, who gleefully presents his writings as “beaux textes d'évangilles en françoys” ‘fine gospel texts in French.’ I concentrate on a single episode of Pantagruel, the one devoted to Panurge's and Pantagruel's twin amatory adventures with a lady of Paris. Although the episode has been the object of some probing critical scrutiny, little attention has been paid to the biblical intertext, which Rabelais's humanist entourage must easily have recognized and which can be read in the context of what modern critics have come to recognize as the Renaissance crisis of exemplarity.

Type
Cluster on Early Modern Women
Information
PMLA , Volume 109 , Issue 2 , March 1994 , pp. 225 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Albistur, Maïté, and Armogathe, Daniel Histoire du féminisme français du Moyen Age à nos jours. Paris: Femmes, 1977.Google Scholar
Bataille, Georges La part maudite. Paris: Minuit, 1949.Google Scholar
Berrong, Richard M Rabelais and Bakhtin: Popular Culture in Gargantua and Pantagruel. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1986.Google Scholar
Biblia Sacra [Vulgate]. Ed. P. Michael Hetzenauer. Ratisbon: Pustet, 1929.Google Scholar
Bloch, R. Howard Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booth, Wayne “Freedom of Interpretation: Bakhtin and the Challenge of Feminist Criticism.” Critical Inquiry 9 (1982): 45–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Briçonnet, Guillaume, and d'Angoulême, Marguerite Correspondance (1521–1524). Ed. Martineau, Ch., Veissière, M., and Heller, H. Geneva: Droz, 1975.Google Scholar
Bynum, Caroline Walker Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: U of California P, 1987.Google Scholar
Bynum, Caroline Walker Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkeley: U of California P, 1982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cave, Terence The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Cotgrave, Randle A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. London: Islip, 1611.Google Scholar
Defaux, Gérard “D'un problème l'autre: Herméneutique de Valtior sensus et captatio lectoris dans le prologue de Gargantua.” Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France 85 (1985): 195–216.Google Scholar
Defaux, Gérard Pantagruel et les sophistes. Contribution à l'histoire de l'humanisme chrétien au seizième siècle. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973.Google Scholar
Duval, Edwin M The Design of Rabelais's Pantagruel. New Haven: Yale UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Fiorenza, Elizabeth Schüssler In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroads, 1983.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard, 1966.Google Scholar
Frame, Donald M, trans. The Complete Works of François Rabelais. By Rabelais. Berkeley: U of California P, 1991.Google Scholar
Freccero, Carla “Damning Haughty Dames: Panurge and the Haulte Dame de Paris (Pantagruel, 14).” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 15 (1985): 57–67.Google Scholar
Freccero, Carla Father Figures: Genealogy and Narrative Structure in Rabelais. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freccero, Carla “The ‘Instance’ of the Letter: Woman in the Text of Rabelais.” Rabelais's Incomparable Book: Essays on His Art. Ed. La Charité, Raymond C. Lexington: French Forum, 1986. 45–55.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard Figures III. Paris: Seuil, 1972.Google Scholar
Greene, Thomas M The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Hampton, Timothy Writing from History. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Holy Bible, Authorized King James Version. New York: Modern Library, 1943.Google Scholar
Huguet, Edmond Dictionnaire de la langue française du XVIe siècle. 7 vols. Paris: Didier, 1925–67.Google Scholar
Hutcheon, Linda “Ironie, satire, parodie. Une approche pragmatique de l'ironie.” Poétique 46 (1981): 140–14.Google Scholar
Jeanneret, Michel “Débordements rabelaisiens.” Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse 43 (1991): 105–10.Google Scholar
Jordan, Constance Renaissance Feminism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jourda, Pierre, ed Œuvres complètes. By François Rabelais. 2 vols. Paris: Gamier, 1962.Google Scholar
Kelly, Joan Women, History, and Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984.Google Scholar
Kinser, Samuel Rabelais's Carnival: Text, Context, Meta-text. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990.Google Scholar
Kritzman, Lawrence D The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Lefèvre d'Etaples, Jacques Epistres et Evangiles pour les cinquante et deux dimanches de l'an. Ed. Bedouelle, Guy and Giacone, Franco. Leiden: Brill, 1976.Google Scholar
Littré, Emile Dictionnaire de la langue française. Vol. 6. Paris: Gallimard, 1961. 7 vols.Google Scholar
Lyons, John D Exemplum: The Rhetoric of Example in Early Modern France and Italy. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Navarre, Marguerite de Heptaméron. Ed. François, Michel. Paris: Gamier, 1967.Google Scholar
Quint, David Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source. New Haven: Yale UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Rigolot, François “Le poétique et l'analogique.” Poétique 35 (1978): 257–25.Google Scholar
Rigolot, François Poétique et onomastique. L'exemple de la Renaissance. Geneva: Droz, 1977.Google Scholar
Rigolot, François Le texte de la Renaissance: Des rhétoriqueurs à Montaigne. Geneva: Droz, 1982.Google Scholar
Saulnier, Verdun L., ed Pantagruel. By François Rabelais. Paris: Droz, 1946.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Jerome Irony and Ideology in Rabelais: Structures of Subversion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Screech, Michael A L'évangélisme de Rabelais. Geneva: Droz, 1979.Google Scholar
Stierle, Karlheinz “L'histoire comme exemple, l'exemple comme histoire.” Poétique 10 (1972): 176–17.Google Scholar
Surtz, Ronald E The Guitar of God: Gender, Power, and Authority in the Visionary World of Mother Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534). Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uitti, Karl D “Women Saints, the Vernacular, and History in Early Medieval France.” Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe. Ed. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, R. and Szell, T. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991. 247–24.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Florence M The Wine and the Will: Rabelais's Bacchic Christianity. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1972.Google Scholar