Welcome to the new format of the Reading Diary! In order to keep our course running as smoothly as possible, we’re going to be holding more of our conversation here.
You’ll need to post four times each week. Posts are due at 5pm on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If you’re hosting an Appetizer this week, you don’t need to post at all!
Speaking of Appetizers, you’ll also be posting in a special discussion section with a small group of other students in response to one of this week’s Appetizer posts. You’ll post there three times per week: Mondays and Wednesdays by 5pm, Thursdays before class.
Head on over to the Schedule for weekly Appetizer assignments, and check The Plan for a full description of changes to the course.
Opening Prompt: This week, we’ll finally be diving into Rabelais. I’ve asked you to read the first half of the novel Pantagruel (chapters 1-12), focusing especially on chapters 4-5 and 11-12. Let’s begin as we often do with a new author by cataloguing places where the body and its grotesque aspect appear in the narrative. What are bodies doing in this novel so far? What bodily details, descriptions, actions, and images struck you? What elements of the lower material bodily stratum do we encounter? Do these grotesque bodies begin to achieve any of the carnivalesque effects we’ve grown accustomed to?
I’ll kick things off: Rabelais ends his “address to the reader” like this:
“I give myself – body and soul, tripe and innards – to a hundred thousand punnets of fair devils if I tell you one single word of a lie in the whole of this history: so too, may Saint Anthony’s fire burn you, the falling sickness skew you, quinsy and wolf-ulcers snip you; may you suffer from blood-stools; and:
May the clap caught from your Fair,
Dense as any cow-hide’s hair,
With quick-silver for cement,
Penetrate your fundament,
and may you fall into the sulphurous fire of the Pit like Sodom and Gomorrah should you not firmly believe everything that I shall relate to you in this present Chronicle.”
What effect does it have to start the novel off on this grotesque note? What sort of a relationship does it set up between author and reader?
This is perhaps my favorite example of the liar’s paradox (sorry Lucian!) because it gets at exactly what I think is so fascinating about the kind of comedy and other literature that exploits it (I’ve argued that Plato does the same thing too, albeit in a much subtler way): “I’m lying to you,” says the author, “and, if you don’t believe me, this isn’t going to work out.” (At the risk of unforgivable pretension, I’ve called this in the context of my research ‘the playful space;’ if the interlocutors don’t play along with one another, the work falls flat on its face.) In Rabelais’ address, this fact of fiction in general and the grotesque/comedy in particular is SO interestingly elaborated. There’s the superficial farce, namely that this is all true and you’ll suffer bodily discomforts if you don’t believe it, and the literary/theoretical truth beneath it, namely that this isn’t all true, but, if you refuse to humor it for the duration of time that it holds your attention, it’ll be worthless to you (cf. Lucian’s introduction to the True Histories). He hits you with the yes-and immediately, setting the grotesque-aesthetic tone with the enumeration of punishments with respect to the body (and bodily ailments solved by the Chronicles), bringing the reader’s body into his world, and demanding that we believe alongside him that there are truly giants just walking around.
I’m also especially delighted by how he opens by *telling us who we are* (and we certainly are not knights– I have to imagine contemporary readers were also not knights, and the language is so unbearably clean as to be unambiguously ironic). This is the highest degree of literary transgression that can occur, I think (cogito ergo sum, etc– the thing I am most sure of is myself). From the first word, we cannot rationally abide the lie being spun. He goes on to compound this by telling us it’s the truth! Again, I really love this section.
Even in the opening scenes of the text, the same exaggerated, almost theatrical descriptions of the characters and their actions are evidence of the Grotesque elements we are used to seeing from Rabelais among others. The first thing that struck me in the Prologue was the use of epithets to identify Pantagruel’s predecessor: “the Great and Inestimable Chronicles of the Enormous Giant Gargantua.” This method of description is something that I noticed throughout the text––especially when it comes to elements of the lower strata. On page 17, the consequences of consuming wine are distortions of the body that result in bulges and growth in the belly, backs, genitals, etc. The men, in particular, are afflicted with “big, plump, fat, verdant and cockscombed in the antique style,” in Rabelais’ words, “Nature’s plow-share.” This grotesque transformation is one of the many examples of the bodily aspects that contribute to both the carnivalesque and grotesque.
I was struck by the chapter on “Gargantua’s grief at the death of his wife Badebec.” It really fits right into that “circle of life” idea we’ve spoken about before, that life and death are all connected, and that as a baby is born, the mother dies, but I was also struck by the reaction to the size of Pantagruel. Because he was “so big and fair” (p 25) his father felt that he should laugh with joy. The image of a baby being so outlandishly enormous and still coming out of a woman is ridiculous! Then it turns to more carnivalistic imagery as they have a huge feast to celebrate the birth of his son, and previous life of his wife.
I think the most grotesque thing that struck me was that as the priest was giving the eulogy and they were carrying his wife to the grave (a supposedly serious and sad moment), Gargantua “was caught away in ecstasy,” immediately moves on and says he can’t bring her back with tears. The joy of new life overrides that of death.
I’m glad you brought this scene up because I also found it interesting. I agree it is a striking example of the ideas of death and rebirth in the Grotesque. I was also interested in how serious it felt at points. Specifically, when wondering if he should cry, Gargantua says “‘Never shall I see her again! Her loss to me is immeasurable. O God of mine! What have I done that you should punish me so?'”
While this section has many comic parts, I felt emotional during it. Death during childbirth is much rarer now, but it feels like something almost everyone back then may have been effected by. It also seems to me that death during childbirth may be one of the most tragic ways for your loved one to die, if not the most tragic way. I suppose I realized something this serious could easily be the center of a joke in Rabelais, but I was still surprised to read it and was surprised I was effected by the passage as I was.
The circle of life idea is really interesting. I also saw it in chapter 8 when Pantagruel is reading the letter his father sent him. I thought his father’s depiction of life, death, and rebirth was fascinating and was oddly specific, spiritual, hopeful, and destructive. Although this is not a direct description of the body, to me, it traced purpose of a body in the context of a family, and how the body possesses the history of its lineage. On page 45, “But by means of such propagation of our seed, what was lost to the parents remains in their children and what perished in the children remains in the grandchildren” and page 46, ” I shall not consider that I have totally died but to have transmigrated rather from one place to another, since in you and through you I shall remain in this world”. I thought that these quotes showcased how the body can be viewed as a vessel and I think challenges the physical notion of grotesque, and introduces the idea of the spirit.
This section of the book was also really interesting to me. I think Rabelais is more interesting to me now that I understand just how learned and accomplished he was–I didn’t realize in our early days of reading him just how many angles he was satirizing from. In this portion he’s kind of grappling with something that he must have encountered as both a religious man and a medical professional. In portions of the book such as this, I can understand how Rabelais’ abstaining from the grotesque as a monk and understanding the grotesque as a physician gave him so much material.
Regarding the grotesque in this portion, I found the comparisons of Gargantua to animals really interesting. Earlier in this class, we’ve discussed how humans being like an animal is grotesque. When trying to decide what emotions he should feel, Gargantua is described as “like a mouse in pitch, or a kite in the nets of a fowler.” When mourning his wife, “he bellowed like a cow.” When thinking about his son he “laugh[s] like a calf.” Although these comparisons to the animals do have a grotesque element, I think they are also much more dignified than other examples (such as priests dressed up as asses.)
In the beginning of chapter 2, Rabelais describes the birth of Pantagruel. “She died giving birth to him for he was so wondrously big and heavy that he could not see the light of day without suffocating his mother.” Imagining a baby so large that it suffocates it’s mother upon birth is quite difficult, and it actually doesn’t make any sense considering it had to fit inside the mother to begin with. This is a very grotesque image due to the mere size of Pantagruel and the fact that he is popping out of the lower bodily stratum, but you could also imagine a description (while it might not be pleasant) of Babadec’s body getting crushed beneath Pantagruel and how that would be extremely grotesque as well.
It’s also interesting to think about how Babadec’s death results from the birth of her son and how it fulfills the cycle of birth and death that is central to the Grotesque; her death during childbirth distorts the joy of bearing a child and paints it in a gruesome and grotesque light.
This comment is more about the Carnivalesque than the Grotesque, but: So far in this text, it seems like parody is a huge part of what makes it Carnivalesque, in a way that seems to achieve a lot of the larger political goals discussed by Bakhtin. For example, Pantagruel’s travels to different universities often degrades the academic realm, such as in Chapter 5 when he says, “No books in the world are as beautifully written, ornate, and elegant as the texts of the Pandects, but their hems are so squalid, shameful, and putrid that they are nothing but ordure and filth” (33). As explained in the notation at the beginning of the chapter, this chapter was meant to appeal to “liberal-minded university men,” as it takes a lot of common academic references at the time and makes fun of them. This is also evident in the list of books Pantagruel found in the library of Saint-Victor in Chapter 7. These parodies are meant for an audience of educated people, but they are intended to make these people laugh at themselves and those around them.
I was also struck by the parody that seems to pervade throughout these chapters (and presumably the text). Notably, the first chapter discusses the lineage of Pantegruel, as the bible does with Jesus, and that the reason his is so large is because of an event nearly identical to eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Right away, we notice augmented body parts coming into the picture (bellies, shoulders, legs, body etc.) Chapter 2 refers to the birth of Pantagruel as “the nativity,” as Christian religions do with Jesus.
More in line with the grotesque, I know we’ve already read it, but the bit that still stands out to me the most is the detail Rabelais using when describing young Pantagreul devouring an entire cow (p 27). Reading that he “bit off and ate her udders and half her belly including her liver and kidneys” really made me imagine the gory mess which would be a giant baby biting a cow in half.
Lastly, not really on the topic of either, I think it’s really funny that at the end of Chapter 5, they say that it’s okay that Pantagruel didn’t learn any law upon getting his law degree because he was good at tennis and dancing (if I’m understanding this correctly).
I was struck by the descriptions of Pantagruel’s consumption of food and drink in chapter four. Rabelais writes: “Hercules was nothing with his killing of those two snakes in his cradle, for they were very tiny, flimsy ones: but when Pantagruel was still in his cradle he wrought the most terrible deeds” (27). Pantagruel drank the milk of 406 cows and he drank broth out of a giant stone trough. Rabelais uses the example of Hercules because in mythology Hercules is portrayed as extremely strong. With Pantagruel, Rabelais is one-upping classical models.
This chapter also shows the profligacy and abundance associated with the grotesque. Pantagruel consumes a ridiculous amount of milk and food. When drinking milk from a cow’s udders, he eats the entire lower half of the cow. There is no question about where all this food and milk is coming from, and no possibility that it will ever run out. This chapter fits into the grotesque concepts of indulgence and consumption and abundance.
I read this episode as Rabelais using extreme and grotesque acts of consumption by Pantagruel to critique the exaltation of the acts of infant heroes in classical texts. I’m not sure whether it would be considered parody or satire. In the universe of the book, our narrator presents the wanton and (to borrow the film term) diagetically cruel devouring of a cow as a greater feat than what Hercules did. The terror of the poor cow and the people who intervene in this meal are communicated directly to the reader. By laying out this disturbing act in such bodily detail, I think Rabelais has acheived a carnivalesque effect in that the subjectivity of the lowly beast is brought forward. Did the Nemean Lion get the same treatment? I’m not trying to say that Rabelais was some sort of animal rights activist but much of his work is playing with the largely artificial boundary between animal and human, that only humans laugh at completely natural bodily functions.
I think this is a really cool thought! I also love the phrase, “I’m not trying to say Rabelais was some sort of animal rights activist.”
One theme that unites many of your comments so far is the question: how are we supposed to react to this? Badebec’s death is very sad; Gargantua’s advice to his son is quite sober in tone; the deaths of animals are shocking and violent; the novel is littered with references to sacred texts, especially the Bible, and “serious” works of classical literature. At the same time, everything is undercut and debased: the Bible is made to provide catalogues of food and body parts; animals die in the course of extravagant feasts; Gargantua’s advice is sandwiched among episodes in Pantagruel’s completely useless education. Badebec’s death draws this paradox out most clearly, since it’s presented within the fiction as a crisis of interpretation: Gargantua doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. As you continue to note and catalogue instances of the grotesque in this week’s reading, I’d encourage you to consider the affective responses these episodes create in you (or seem intended to create): are they funny? Does the humor hide a lesson or moral? Does the grotesque simply shock, or does it also reveal? How can we manage the tension these interpretive challenges create?
These ‘crises of interpretation’ make me think about the relationship between Carnival and Lent. In the Bruegel painting “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent,” the manifestations of both Carnival and Lent seem to be in a constant conflict for dominance within the painting, and the interpretation of the painting changes depending on which aspects the viewer chooses to focus on. Similarly, I think that Rabelais’ work finds a balance wherein both the serious and the comedic moods can exist simultaneously without one ever overtaking the other. For me, it has been easier to think about what the mood of a particular sentence or chapter is, rather than trying to identify or maintain a larger mood of the text, because when I am reading Rabelais, my mood and reactions change sentence by sentence. Just like with Carnival and Lent, I think that Rabelais does this intentionally because the serious parts of the text make the less serious parts more impactful and unexpected, and they are able to be enjoyed more– just as Gargantua appreciates his son more after the tragedy of Badebec’s death. In order to manage this tension, it might be best to react to scenes as they occur, rather than letting a contrasting mood/reaction from a previous scene flow into the next.
Sophia, I thought your comment was really insightful! It made me reflect on my own subconscious as I was reading through the novel and how my mood changes sentence by sentence. I also think that one of the humor in Rabelais comes from the “shock” factor that is embedded in the grotesque, the shock factor disturbs an established pattern, mood, or tone, and ushers in a moment of revelry/ surprise for the reader. Although not a very serious part of the text, an example of this is when I was reading through chapter 5 and on page 33 Pantagruel thinks that his law books “seemed to him like a beautiful golden robe, triumphant and wondrously precious, which had been hemmed with shit”. I thought that his quote showed how the shock value of the grotesque can insert a change in mood for the reader. I also thought that this may also serve as an example to your point, Sophia, that we shouldn’t let the emotion of what we have previously read bleed into the next sentence, word, or even syllable that we are yet to encounter.
I agree with this point as well. An additional example of this can be found on page 28, when Rabelais is describing Pantagruel eating the cow. “Everybody ran up as she bellowed and pulled the said cow away from the said Pantagruel’s hands, but they couldn’t stop him from holding on fast to the hock end, which he ate as we might a sausage.” The first part of this sentence is pretty disturbing, imagining a half eaten cow bellowing in pain as it is pulled from the giants hands. However, Rabelais compares it to eating a sausage, which somehow, at least for me, eases the tension of the sentence.
This idea of how we ought to react to these shocking images is really interesting, and I think it fights right in with Alice’s appetizer post about Rocky Horror. She posed the question: what creates the humor, the transvestite, or a horrified couple? I struggled with that idea because I had initially felt that Rabelais/Bakhtin impart this idea of carnival and grotesque being a celebration of the body and the human race as a whole, but I think (as the above comments state,) there certainly is a shock factor that exists and is expected in the text. I think I was so caught up in the idea of celebration and that “grotesque” does not mean gross, I forgot that Rabelais had to have expected surprise and horror from his readers at points, and uses this to his advantage.
I think Rabelais enhances his work by drawing us in with shock and awe, but gives really meaningful and powerful stories right alongside. An impossibly large baby is born, but it tells the (at the time) super common story of a mother dying in childbirth. It can be tough as a reader to reconcile the shocking with the serious, but I think that’s part of the point.
I think that the question, “Does the grotesque simply shock, or does it also reveal?” is really insightful. It’s not a question I actively thought of myself, but now that you ask the question, I realize that I notice Rabelais’ parody being most successful for me in the scenes where the novel is the most grotesque. I also agree with Sophia that Rabelais is very gifted in having the novel achieve very different tones. For example, in the scenes of ‘grotesque parody’ (e.g. the forbidden fruit equivalent making peoples bodies swell in different places), I’m nearly always laughing. This makes it more engaging for me, so I think harder about what I’m reading and tend to notice the parody more.
I’ve always struggled with reconciling the mood of these comic texts with their didacticism, and I think I brought up my hesitation on his with Aristophanes too. I think it’s a matter of drawing a line in the sand up to a certain point, but I can’t help but assume that nothing is sacred or ‘weighty’ in literature like this (e.g. we’re not *meant* to feel bad for Badebec or Gargantua at her death, since it’s silly that she died giving birth to a giant and Gargantua’s indecision about whether to laugh or cry is *also* silly– “[O]ught he to weep out of grief for his wife or laugh out of joy for his son?” (25) would seem very solemn, but I feel like we’re meant to understand as thoroughly ironic, since this indecision immediately becomes a joke about dialectics: “He had good dialectical arguments for both sides. They choked him, for he could marshal them very well in syllogistic modes and figures but he could come to no conclusion” (25). The preface also almost warns against this reading with its incredibly ironic telling of people referencing the Chronicles almost like verses. For all these reasons, I’m not sure if we’re meant to take a *lesson* about the victory of life over death, but certainly the story does *portray* that. I worry about looking for lessons in things, most especially comedy, that say they’re lessons (the preface vaguely going along these lines)– this isn’t to say that that there may not be lessons and moments of sober truth, but only to say that it doesn’t seem like the project of texts like these.
Content warning: discussion of gore and body horror
Your question about what qrotesqueness does for the audience is really interesting to me as I have recently been distracting myself from homework/life by reading horror novels. Most recently, I read Uzumaki by Junji Ito, which is a body horror manga. Let me tell you: Ito is very good at putting the human body front and center in his work. Uzumaki features mosquito-tainted babies growing excess placentas and demanding human blood. Baby Pantagruel eating the utters off of a cow would be best friends with those kids. Why am I reading one of these works as horror and the other as a comedic satire?
At the beginning of this semester, we discussed how grotesqueness could be empowering. The surplus of appetite, of body parts, of resources can be funny, shocking, empowering, but also kind of scary. I think this scariness is part of why Bakhtin started thinking about the carnivalesque. By drawing attention to the pleasures and community that comes with the carnivalesque, Rabelais is again putting humanity and community into these excessive human bodies. As Badebec’s epitaph notes, “she lived in this corpse.” Rabelais’s giants are more than huge bodies–they’re weird people that reside in massive bodies. I think a lot of the humor that I get from Rabelais is less from the giants’ actions and more from the shamelessness and joy they get from using their bodies.
Pretty much the only real dialogue we have read so far is between Pantagruel and the man who spoke a very Latin version of French. During this section we see Billingsgate from both sides. This is very clear when Pantagruel speaks since he says things like “‘I shall flay you alive'” and both he and his men mock the other speaker a great deal.
However, I was much more interested in the insults used by the man using a huge amount of Latin words. Even without being able to understand what he means, some of what he says is so clearly insulting. For example he calls a man a “‘flagitious nebulon'”, and while I had no idea what flagitious meant and “nebulon” doesn’t seem to be a word, I could still tell he was basically calling the guy an idiot. I enjoy how Rabelais is able to make me understand what this man says, especially the insults, even when most of the words he uses are nonsense to me.
(as a note, I also enjoyed the insult “‘You flay Latin!'” and am glad no one has ever said that to me in my Latin classes.)
I also really liked this part and how, even with all the nonsense words, you could clearly see the tone of the scene and understand what Rabelais was trying to get across. I think it’s funny how Rabelais is making fun of educated people, when that would be the primary audience. I think previously when I was thinking about Rabelais I was taking the satire/parody aspect a bit too seriously. Rabelais is poking fun at educated people in a good-natured way, that everyone reading and hearing these stories can enjoy. It can be good and cathartic to be able to laugh at yourself.
I think that what Helena has expressed about her ambivalence towards concluding any sort of moral lessons from comedic texts like this is a really important issue to work through. I want to contend with whether Gargantua’s letter to Pantagruel is a continuation of Rabelais’ celebration of prodigality and the lower body. First, in response to the proffesor’s question about our emotions while reading, I felt a tinge of admiration again on page 49 where Gargantua writes, “Then frequent the books of the ancient medical writers, Greek, Arabic and Latin, without despising the Talmudists or the Cabbalists; and by frequent dissections acquire a perfect knowledge of that other world which is Man.” Science and especially medicine was being uprooted in the Rennaissance. Taboos against bodily dissections were loosening even further and one of the defining images of this new humanism was DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man. But the Vitruvian man is definetly not a grotesque figure. Much of the new celebration of Man, the intermediary between angel and beast, manifested itself through these representations of perfection. Bodies are being brought forward (even lower half think of The David) but in very particular ways that deny a sense of the peasant communal body/spirit. I’m really impressed with how Rabelais was able to mediate between these often opposing visions of the body. I think through Gargantua’s letter, he’s even degrading the high pursuit of knowledge by using metaphors like “Know… all the metals hidden deep in the womb of the Earth… let none remain unknown to you.” “In short, let me see you an abyss of erudition.” Thanks to the larger brains of the giants and their long lifespans they would be able to truly accomplish the consumption of the world’s knowledge.
Also kind of tangential but I want to note the (in)significance of that line “without despising the Talmudists or the Cabbalists.” These are both references to Jewish traditions of learning and interpreting G-d’s law. Is this line a indications of a contemporary sentiment of limited harmony among Christian and Jewish intellectuals? Or should I stop taking so much of this text at face value?
One thing that I was wondering about while reading was who the intended audience was. Rabelais includes a lot of references to classical authors that I feel like the general public wouldn’t be fully familiar with. For example, chapter four opens with Rabelais encouraging the reader to reader Pliny, book seven. There are a lot of grotesque moments and humor in the text, but a lot of intellectual references that sort of take you out of the atmosphere and cater to a more educated crowd. The literacy rate was very low, and the amount of educated elite that understood Latin would have been even lower. I wonder if people with less education would have been familiar with these stories through some sort of oral tradition, and I wonder if Rabelais’ work is serving as a social equalizer like Bakhtin believes the grotesque does, if not everyone could access it.
Going off of Charlotte’s comment here and Professor Farmer’s down below, I think the text tells us it would have been for a wide range of people, from just literate to highly educated. I certainly do not get every reference in this book, and we rely on lots of footnotes to help us understand what Rabelais is saying! Some of his references may have been more obvious to readers of his time, but others would have been likely just as difficult to catch. The thing is, even without footnotes to catch every reference, we would be able to still understand the story and most of the humor.
Also, the section from p. 51-57 where Panurge speaks in a bunch of different languages clearly cannot have expected every reader to know every language; Rabelais either repeats what he says in French afterwards or says he doesn’t understand either. We all got by without knowing these languages; though we do now have little footnote translations, by the end we finally understand Panurge just wants some food. Likely readers would have recognized a few similar-sounding words in a couple languages, and gotten an idea, but then Rabelais also makes it clear. If you knew all/most of the languages, good for you, but if not, you can still follow along. I think this section is a really good example of how broad an audience the text is speaking to.
I think that Screech’s notes help us understand another element of the humor within this text: performance. I found this helpful article about the development of silent reading in early modern Europe.
https://qz.com/quartzy/1118580/the-beginning-of-silent-reading-was-also-the-beginning-of-an-interior-life/
“If silent reading was in fact rare or rude in ancient times, then at some point the expectation of readers in society shifted. As late as the 1700s, historian Robert Darnton writes, ‘For the common people in early modern Europe, reading was a social activity. It took place in workshops, barns, and taverns. It was almost always oral but not necessarily edifying.'”
Screech tells us that he is reluctant to provide translations for Panurge’s multilingual ramblings becuase he insits that the humor lies in how the words sound. (Maybe I have too much of a monotone reading voice but I didn’t laugh when I was bumbling with the Scotish Gaelic in my mouth). The verbalization of much this text would have been articualted in a social setting where perhaps hearing your drunken friend in the tavern stumbling over whatever the hell the language of Utopia is would have been very funny. This chapter makes a compelling argument about the necesity of a carnivalesque audience when appreciating a work of Rabelais.
To go along with what Hannah said, I tend to read the chapter, then go back and look at all the notes to see what I missed. I find that I am able to roughly “guess” what the joke is and still find it funny even without the knowledge I really need. So I definitely agree that even without the full knowledge of the jokes, the humor can still be portrayed, especially if the author writes well.
One example it when Pantegruel as a baby eating a cow is compared to Hercules killing two snakes. Even without knowing who Hercules is, you see that Pantegruel’s story is crazy and disturbing while you can assume the story of Hercules is serious. So even if some humor is lost, the big picture is still there.
Also, I think that this book is so dense with jokes, many of which are more or less universal that no matter what your background, there is almost constantly something funny. For the most part, the “higher” jokes can be ignored and there is still huge amounts of humor.
While I agree with everything that everyone’s said, I think that focusing on the generalizing aspect of grotesque humor might lead away from some of the hallmarks of comedic works, namely specificity. Of course, there are jokes that’ll never not make sense to a human person so long as they know the language since certain human experiences are functionally universal (think every grotesque thing we’ve talked about in class), but that Rabelais goes out of his way to make jokes about the very local also speaks to a kind of peasant knowledge/attitude. As Pantagruel does his tour of French universities, several little jokes are made about cities and their history– Tia included a picture in her appetizer presentation of the women at Avignon who are “especially amorous” because it used to be a papal city, whatever that means– which color the text in a more superficial but still important way (though I don’t think anyone is saying these kinds of jokes aren’t important!). It’s like, for us, making jokes about how Florida should be sawed off the continent or New Yorkers are rude. Those kinds of statements require a lot of imported knowledge (Rabelais would certainly understand them as little as we understand his without the footnotes), but they unite a community of people in their specificity. We also saw these kinds of jokes in Aristophanes, who constantly alluded to specific people (I think in Birds he even references a prominent bird wholesaler, which is as specific at it gets). Not implicitly understanding those jokes means a lot of stuff goes over our head, and certainly the fundamental stuff still lands, but I think it’s also important to recognize the significance of local/specific humor in the texture and fabric of folk/peasant communities.
Several of you have raised a question of “audience”, and as you continue your pursuit of the bodily grotesque in the first half of the novel this week, I’d like to use that as a way to frame our inquiry. I’m less interested in reconstructing a specific historical audience (although we can say that Rabelais’ works were hugely popular – everyone from the king of France down was reading them, and for those who couldn’t read, there were performances and adaptations of many kinds). Instead, I’d like us to be thinking about how the *text itself* constructs its ideal audience. What repertoires of knowledge does it demand? What types of people are portrayed? Who are the objects of satire, the butts of the jokes? Collin draws our attention to the references to Jewish and Arabic learning; Charlotte notes the breadth of classical Greek and Roman allusions; Nico focuses on the Latinate humor; what are some of the other ways the text itself tells us who it’s for?
(I’d also like to note that you should not feel you need to reply to my comments specifically if you’d like to take the conversation in other directions. Especially as the week goes on, it may be more profitable to go back and respond to people’s earlier comments, rather than always to push forward with me).
I would say that Rabelais purposely makes his jokes palatable to as many people as possible. As you mentioned above, he was largely popular all the way from the King to commoners. A lot of his jokes target the upper class, and he crafts in them such a way that commoners can laugh at them, but also the upper class can laugh at themselves. For example, we can look at page 59, where Rabelais is listing the most learned and elite people in the land, but gives them names such as Bumkis and Slurp-ffart. He introduces the most learned person in the land as Du Douhet which to me sounds like da-dooyyy, as someone would say when you say something so obvious to make you feel stupid. Even though “da-doy” may have not been a term in the 16th century, the sound of Du Douhet still sounds dull, far from the name of the smartest person in the land. The irony he uses here is one of the great tools of satire, and I believe that he uses it in a manner that allows anyone to appreciate it.
I agree that this text seems to appeal to as many people as possible. On the surface, it seems that satirizing the academic realm of the time period would only appeal to the people who are a part of that realm. However, I (and probably many of us) am not an expert on academia in France at the time of Rabelais’ writing, and am not at all familiar with the kinds of works and intellectuals that he is making fun of, yet despite this, I am still able to appreciate the satire because I can apply it to my own experiences with elitism and intellectualism. Like Nico mentioned before, the seen with the Parisian man using Latin is a great example of this. I have no background in Latin or French, and I couldn’t specifically relate to the annoyance that Pantagruel was feeling toward this man in this scene, but I could still find ways to interpret the words myself through tone. I feel that if we in the present day are able to appreciate pieces of the satire in the text, it must have been equally accessible to even those outside the academic realm at the time. The text seems to primarily satirize the people in power (often in intellectual power), which I think makes it relatable to a larger number of people because we have all dealt with elitism or power imbalance in some form.
I also saw this reflected in the text. I think that Rabelais intentionally switches between “proper” or conventional sentences and childish banter. There are moments in the text where Pantagruel appears inquisitive and well-spoken (I say this in comparison to the other things he says…), and then will suddenly switch to “Pooh, pooh… What does this idiot mean!” (pg.35). This switch in language as a tool for satirization is the key to accessibility, and allows the text to be regarded as both academic and an approachable read. Even while reading the text today, Pantagruel’s reactions towards other characters is ‘#relatable’. I’m unsure if the language was included intentionally to be accessible, but I think satirization is inherently accessible for the majority.
I’m also curious as to the answer to this question — because although we are able to interpret the academic jokes in the context of our own lives, I think that we’re primarily able to do so because of our own education. Not only can we apply Rabelais’ commentary to our own experiences in higher education, but we are also doing so (at least in my case) relying heavily on the guidance of our highly educated peers and professor. As you say, I’m no expert on ancient French culture, but this makes me question (not necessarily doubt) whether the academic satire would be applicable to the uneducated members of French society. The translator also notes that the particular section on Pantagruel in school was especially loved by liberal minded French academics.
I think a big part of the strength of Rabelais’ diverse audience is due to his pretty large repertoire of subjects, evidenced most clearly by the array of topics we have all brought up already in this thread (and Matt briefly compiled above). With so many allusions to previous literature or different cultures, at least part of the satire could probably have been appreciated by nearly all readers, and they could enjoy the narrative for references they didn’t understand (this is my experience).
On a slightly separate note, I find Rabelais’ unnecessary specificity, often with quantities, to be one of the most comical aspects of his writing. Instead of saying that Pantagruel smashed his cradle, he says that Pantagruel crushed it into 400,00 different pieces, or some other massive number. He also makes reference to fake literature and small sidenotes (eg. all of the details in the genealogy of Pantegruel) that are so arbitrary. I think he does this very tastefully and it adds a lot to the humor of the novel.
I agree that Rabelais must have been trying to make his satire as acceptable to everyone as possible. As you stated, he makes sure that everyone understands that the latin french sounds very silly. I also found it interesting that he was making fun of the man for using too much Latin. In a lot of other parts of the story, excesses are seen in positive lights. For example, baby Pantagruel’s excessive eating is seen as funny (if a bit gruesome). However, this guy’s excessive Latin and excessive verbosity is seen as foolish and the character is painted in a negative light (he’s the butt of the joke). I’m not sure I’m making any sense, but I think looking at what excesses are portrayed positively in Rabelais can also show where he’s inverting hierarchy or making fun of power systems/academia.
A question that arose for me following our class session about audience and interpretation is what does Rabelais want us to do with our own bodies? Throughout the semester, we’ve talked about how reading about bodies farting and eating and having sex can be very validating for us, the audience. After noting how Rabelais is making fun of established customs and hierarchies, I believe that he wants people to not take bodies too seriously. But is he encouraging us to increase our consumption and to go on sexual escapades? Or is he just asking us to not be ashamed when we naturally eat more than usual? Or does Rabelais not care what his audience is actively doing?
The question of what Rabelais’ audience is intended to do with their bodies is a really interesting one, and one that I think can only be answered on an individual basis. Rabelais’ work, as you’ve pointed out, can be very validating and empowering to its audience as we navigate living in individual and collective bodies. For me, though, I haven’t found that reading Rabelais has made me want to change anything about my lifestyle or what I physically do with my body; it has only made me more conscious of the body and, like you said, less ashamed about natural processes. For some people, maybe reading Rabelais does cause them to change their lifestyle. Either way, I think that both reactions achieve Rabelais’ goal. Maybe he doesn’t care what his audience does with their bodies, but I think he does care about how his audience views the body, and there is more than one way to incorporate a more positive and validating view of the body into everyday life, regardless of how this physically manifests for different members of Rabelais’ audience.
I think this is a really interesting question to consider. Rabelais tries to normalize the functions of the human body and looks for the humor and the joy in these functions rather than shame. I don’t think he is trying to dictate what the audience does but he is trying to get them to think about the body in a different way. I think he mostly uses the body as a form of common ground among the audience. Everyone has a body, everyone’s body does the same things, so everyone can get the sort of humor that Rabelais uses in his writing.
Like Sophia and Charlotte, I think this is a really interesting question. I’m specifically interested in the shame element: does Rabelais want to alleviate our bodily shame? I think it’s a question that would require some thorough historical research to answer, but I think one potential way to get at it would be to ask if the characters in Rabelais are role models, necessarily. (This is whether or not Rabelais thought of them as setting a didactic example.) I think Pantagruel and Gargantua themselves probably most nearly approach these kinds of roles, and they’re both totally unashamed of their size. However, and against all odds, they don’t seem to be face external shaming except from particularly mean people, whereas shaming in real societies is invested in us, largely without malice but just as a function of social norms, from a very early age. So if Gargantua and Pantagruel are shameless about their enormous size, is this a way into relieving ourselves of our bodily shame, or is it a way to understand that shame is taught and not inherent, or something else?
(Sorry that this comes late!!! Also, I want to say for posterity that I did not choose this profile picture unironically– it is an ironic choice.)
As you make your final comments today and tomorrow, I’d like us to continue considering the theme of laughter: who is being invited to laugh? Who are the objects of laughter? Does that help us understand who this text is for? Does it help us understand it as carnivalesque?
As we touched on in class, I think the audience is called to laugh at lots of different things, and depending on your education/literacy/lot in life you will have a different interpretation of the text. Just as big movies today can have both witty quips and classic literature references, at the same time as toilet humor, or serious moments laced with humor (that still doesn’t undermine the meaning! (I think of a lot of the Marvel movies, which have serious themes (saving the world) but tons of (sometimes very low) humor. These appeal to a fairly broad audience, as even those who haven’t followed every movie can still go, miss some jokes, laugh at others, etc.
For this reason I think all people are invited to laugh: people who have experienced the situation and those who have not. Scholars who have lived thorough the troubles of the higher education system, lawyers who feel that they’ve fought against cases similar to Panurge’s, but also all the people who laugh at the idea of higher education. People are laughing at the same thing for different reasons: they’ve experienced it or it is other to them. I think this is very carnivalesque, since it means a sort of coming together to laugh at the same jokes and at each other.
I think that the analogy to the marvel movies is a great one. Those movies cater to all walks of life, just as many of the jokes in Gargantua and Pantagruel do. You can still go to those movies and enjoy them without understanding everything, and I think that is exactly what is going on with Rabelais too. Although a peasant might have not understood everything, he could’ve still appreciated parts of it, and this lack of understanding wouldn’t take away from the enjoyment of the whole book. In the same way, we don’t understand the bits and pieces of everything going on in Rabelais, but can still enjoy it.
Originally I thought that there was a feeling of exclusion in some of the jokes, but after revisiting the text I would agree that there is a broad sense of universality. I think that at times it’s difficult to predict how someone’s experiences will direct their thinking and how they interpret humor, but I would agree that Rabelais’ jokes invite all to join in on laughter. I also think that this invitation for all to laugh is inherently carnivalesque and there is a sense that the characters are laughing and the audience is joining in on the joke, and everyone is laughing together and not necessarily at someone/something. I think that this quality is carnivalesque, and also shows integral it is that the reader feels invited to join in on the laughter.
One of the things my small group discussed in class, which I think is very interesting, is the way in which sensitive current events are discussed in Rabelais’ work. For example, in our passage (Ch. 11), Panurge talks about women and their bodies in a pretty objectifying way, which we interpreted as part of the misogyny that (I think) Elinor mentioned. However, Matt brought up the fact that Panurge isn’t judgmental in his discussion of women; rather, he’s very happy it. Setting aside the larger potential societal/social implications of the passage (which, for the record, Matt was not trying to downplay), it’s interesting to read carefully the manner in which the characters discuss topics that we are very mindful about in a place like Haverford/Bryn Mawr.