Neil Rennie
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198186274
- eISBN:
- 9780191674471
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186274.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 18th Century and Early American Literature
In Francois Rabelais's account of the voyage of Pantagruel, grandson of the King of Utopia, to consult the oracle of the Holy Bottle, ‘pres le Catay en Indie superieure’, the voyagers encounter in ...
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In Francois Rabelais's account of the voyage of Pantagruel, grandson of the King of Utopia, to consult the oracle of the Holy Bottle, ‘pres le Catay en Indie superieure’, the voyagers encounter in imaginary Satinland a monstrous old man named Ouy-dire, Hearsay, an authority on all the exotic nations and peoples of the world. He is blind and crippled, but his body is covered with ears and he is talking with seven tongues, each divided into seven parts, to an audience which includes Herodotus, Pliny, Strabo, Marco Polo, and Pietro Martire. One of those named amongst this crowd of ancient and modern authors of travel literature is the French explorer Jacques Cartier (1491–1557), thought by some 20th-century scholars to be the original for Pantagruel's pilot on his voyage, called Jamet Brayer. However, the real Jacques Cartier, like many other Renaissance voyagers, learned to distrust Rabelais's Ouy-dire.Less
In Francois Rabelais's account of the voyage of Pantagruel, grandson of the King of Utopia, to consult the oracle of the Holy Bottle, ‘pres le Catay en Indie superieure’, the voyagers encounter in imaginary Satinland a monstrous old man named Ouy-dire, Hearsay, an authority on all the exotic nations and peoples of the world. He is blind and crippled, but his body is covered with ears and he is talking with seven tongues, each divided into seven parts, to an audience which includes Herodotus, Pliny, Strabo, Marco Polo, and Pietro Martire. One of those named amongst this crowd of ancient and modern authors of travel literature is the French explorer Jacques Cartier (1491–1557), thought by some 20th-century scholars to be the original for Pantagruel's pilot on his voyage, called Jamet Brayer. However, the real Jacques Cartier, like many other Renaissance voyagers, learned to distrust Rabelais's Ouy-dire.
Nina Levine and David Lee Miller
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230303
- eISBN:
- 9780823241071
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823230303.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter tells of the sudden, surprising friendship that springs up instantly between these two great opposites: “How Pantagruel met Panurge, whom he loved all his life” (“lequel il aima toute sa ...
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This chapter tells of the sudden, surprising friendship that springs up instantly between these two great opposites: “How Pantagruel met Panurge, whom he loved all his life” (“lequel il aima toute sa vie”). Berger can seem to be the trickster Panurge — pan ourgos — who speaks all languages but finally cannot get Pantagruel to read the truth of the body, but it would be more accurate to say that the two of them — these two great friends — come together to form a single figure resembling that of Harry Berger. For Berger is first and foremost a humanist and a moral thinker. As Peter Erickson points out in his introduction to Making Trifles of Terrors, “Berger is resolutely — some might same relentlessly — moral in his critical pursuits,” and he is also importantly the classicist, the reader of Plato, the scholar of myth and epic.Less
This chapter tells of the sudden, surprising friendship that springs up instantly between these two great opposites: “How Pantagruel met Panurge, whom he loved all his life” (“lequel il aima toute sa vie”). Berger can seem to be the trickster Panurge — pan ourgos — who speaks all languages but finally cannot get Pantagruel to read the truth of the body, but it would be more accurate to say that the two of them — these two great friends — come together to form a single figure resembling that of Harry Berger. For Berger is first and foremost a humanist and a moral thinker. As Peter Erickson points out in his introduction to Making Trifles of Terrors, “Berger is resolutely — some might same relentlessly — moral in his critical pursuits,” and he is also importantly the classicist, the reader of Plato, the scholar of myth and epic.
François Rigolot
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853237853
- eISBN:
- 9781846312977
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853237853.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter looks at two or three basic texts which in the 1960s contributed to the emergence of what is known as ‘structuralist’ reading by re-reading some particularly obscure chapters of François ...
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This chapter looks at two or three basic texts which in the 1960s contributed to the emergence of what is known as ‘structuralist’ reading by re-reading some particularly obscure chapters of François Rabelais's Pantagruel. It first re-reads some now classic articles collected in Roman Jakobson's Essays in General Linguistics, published between 1956 and 1960. It then examines how the most basic tools of linguistics bring rich suggestiveness to the reading of a text that is particularly recalcitrant. It also considers how Jakobson's structuralist analysis may address the apparent disappearance of language's referential function by analysing the essay ‘Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances’, published in 1956 in The Fundamentals of Language. Finally, the chapter discusses the extent to which the Jakobsonian theory of metaphor and metonymy could shed light on the linguistic controversy related to the dispute between Baisecul and Humevesne in Pantagruel. It argues that structuralism, at least in its Jakobsonian form, will be useful in highlighting certain aspects of the work often obscured by the excessive referentialism of traditional literary criticism.Less
This chapter looks at two or three basic texts which in the 1960s contributed to the emergence of what is known as ‘structuralist’ reading by re-reading some particularly obscure chapters of François Rabelais's Pantagruel. It first re-reads some now classic articles collected in Roman Jakobson's Essays in General Linguistics, published between 1956 and 1960. It then examines how the most basic tools of linguistics bring rich suggestiveness to the reading of a text that is particularly recalcitrant. It also considers how Jakobson's structuralist analysis may address the apparent disappearance of language's referential function by analysing the essay ‘Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances’, published in 1956 in The Fundamentals of Language. Finally, the chapter discusses the extent to which the Jakobsonian theory of metaphor and metonymy could shed light on the linguistic controversy related to the dispute between Baisecul and Humevesne in Pantagruel. It argues that structuralism, at least in its Jakobsonian form, will be useful in highlighting certain aspects of the work often obscured by the excessive referentialism of traditional literary criticism.
Jonathan Patterson
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- June 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198840015
- eISBN:
- 9780191875625
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198840015.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, European Literature
At the centre of this book is an analysis of what Rabelais called ‘la plus grande villanie du monde’—‘the world’s greatest villainy’ (Pantagruel chs. 21–2). In this episode, Panurge enacts a vengeful ...
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At the centre of this book is an analysis of what Rabelais called ‘la plus grande villanie du monde’—‘the world’s greatest villainy’ (Pantagruel chs. 21–2). In this episode, Panurge enacts a vengeful trick on a Haughty Lady who spurned his advances. Chapter 8 evaluates divergent allegorical readings of the trick in relation to the episode’s farcical, scatological, and legal overtones. Since there is no judicial redress, Rabelais leaves us with an unfixed vilain et énorme cas of sorts: a situation that is morally, criminally, and aesthetically vilain; and énorme in an ever-expanding, spatial sense. Across the chapter, Panurge’s expansive villainy (panourgia) is explored in relation to his ageist–sexist tendencies, and in relation to his taste for facetious litigation (causes grasses) in the first half of Pantagruel. To these may be added his remonstrating against the scandalous ‘heretic’ Raminograbis and his cowardly, diabolical ravings (Tiers Livre chs. 21–3).Less
At the centre of this book is an analysis of what Rabelais called ‘la plus grande villanie du monde’—‘the world’s greatest villainy’ (Pantagruel chs. 21–2). In this episode, Panurge enacts a vengeful trick on a Haughty Lady who spurned his advances. Chapter 8 evaluates divergent allegorical readings of the trick in relation to the episode’s farcical, scatological, and legal overtones. Since there is no judicial redress, Rabelais leaves us with an unfixed vilain et énorme cas of sorts: a situation that is morally, criminally, and aesthetically vilain; and énorme in an ever-expanding, spatial sense. Across the chapter, Panurge’s expansive villainy (panourgia) is explored in relation to his ageist–sexist tendencies, and in relation to his taste for facetious litigation (causes grasses) in the first half of Pantagruel. To these may be added his remonstrating against the scandalous ‘heretic’ Raminograbis and his cowardly, diabolical ravings (Tiers Livre chs. 21–3).
Neil Kenny
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- December 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198754039
- eISBN:
- 9780191815782
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198754039.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Part IV explores how many of the contexts and strands of tense-use for the dead that have been explored separately so far were combined in practice by two of the greatest vernacular prose writers of ...
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Part IV explores how many of the contexts and strands of tense-use for the dead that have been explored separately so far were combined in practice by two of the greatest vernacular prose writers of the European Renaissance. The first is François Rabelais. This chapter starts by outlining the general economy of tenses with which the dead are referred to in his fictional chronicles. Then, two sequences of Rabelais’s chapters are analysed in detail. Each stretches and tests that economy of tenses in particularly intense ways in order to explore posthumous survival or non-survival. The first sequence is Chapters 3–8 of Pantagruel (1532); the second is Chapters 17–28 of the Quart livre (1552).Less
Part IV explores how many of the contexts and strands of tense-use for the dead that have been explored separately so far were combined in practice by two of the greatest vernacular prose writers of the European Renaissance. The first is François Rabelais. This chapter starts by outlining the general economy of tenses with which the dead are referred to in his fictional chronicles. Then, two sequences of Rabelais’s chapters are analysed in detail. Each stretches and tests that economy of tenses in particularly intense ways in order to explore posthumous survival or non-survival. The first sequence is Chapters 3–8 of Pantagruel (1532); the second is Chapters 17–28 of the Quart livre (1552).
