Welcome to this week’s Reading Diary. You’ll need to post four times here this week 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: Let’s approach this week’s reading thinking particularly about the forms of folk humor Bakhtin tells us are the basic carnival foundations of the novel: feasts and celebrations; parody; and billingsgate. What examples do you come across in this week’s reading of these three phenomena? As we begin to catalogue them, how do we find the grotesque body functioning in these carnivalesque moments?
I’ll begin our conversation with a reminder about the elements our reading of Bakhtin tells us to watch for in examining the carnivalesque: freedom from fear through laughter; dissolution of hierarchies; crownings and uncrownings; degradation of the sacred and serious; undermining of the official version of the events; utopian abundance and profligacy; removal of internal and external censorship; representation of the people’s body as immortal and indestructible.
I found chapter 20 to be very carnivalesque. It begins with Panurge healing Epistemon, who had previously been decapitated. The chapter quickly becomes a long list of all the people Epistemon met while dead, mostly famous mythical and historical figures who have been given jobs that would fit in with the market place. For example, he begins by saying Alexander the Great is now patching up pants, Achilles is a dyer while Agamemnon is eating a lot of casseroles, and so on. He also pokes fun at religious figures, saying that “Pope Alexander was a rat-catcher; Pope Sixtus, a greaser of syphilitic sores.” Once Epistemon is done listing the new jobs of these figures, the chapter ends with Pantagruel and friends drinking massive amounts of alcohol.
In chapter 15, Pantagruel receives a letter from an unnamed woman, supposedly his lover. The letter is blank and is accompanied by a ring. I thought this excerpt was a really amusing and interesting parody of love (and a break-up), as well as Christianity. One instance of parody is with the ring. The ring has a fake diamond, and, therefore, according to Panurge, conveys false love. His logic is backed up by a pretty good pun (diamant faux, Di amant faux). A second instance of parody comes with the inscription on the ring: LAMAH HAZABTHANI, which, again according to Panurge, is Hebrew and translates to: “Why hast thou forsaken me?” In Matthew 27:46, Christ cries out to God a very similar phrase in Aramaic (and Mishnaic Hebrew too I think?). According to the unnamed woman, with the loss of love, she suffers like Christ on the cross, while Pantagruel takes on the role of an absent God. I also think the idea of an inscribed ring is something so common in folk traditions, in terms of magic, curses, marriage, etc., that having one appear in this absurd situation is a parody itself (Rabelais parodying Tolkien hundreds of years before Tolkien?).
There is also the matter of the blank note. I thought this was the funniest part of the chapter, considering how Pantagruel kept drenching the paper in these absurd remedies, only for it to continuously come up blank. I think this could be taken as a parody of folk remedies, but also the image of a note being coated in so many substances, bodily and not, came across as very grotesque to me. I am having trouble articulating how exactly it is grotesque, but the mixture of bodily substances like “the milk of a mother suckling her first-born daughter” with things like the axunge of bats or ear-wax with “ashes of a swallow’s nest” reminded me of Bakhtin’s ideas about the grotesque human body being the body that is open and mixes with the outside world. Also, the fact that all of these resources are just suddenly available to Panurge, despite being so completely random, was very funny to me.
Chapter 13 had many clear aspects of parody of philosophical debates. At the beginning when Thaumastes is about to ask to talk with Pantegruel about various topics, he says he does not want the conversation to be “pro et contra” which has already been mocked greatly in the book, as well as the sophists who used it. I feel like before this point, the book trained us to think of mocking “pro et contra” as an easy joke to make. So, I expected Thaumastes to simply go on and say that this debate has to be more honest and learned. Instead, he decides the debate must be absurd, and only done in signs, without any words.
The rest of the chapter seems to parody any tense situation in literature, such as debates. The narrator takes everything very seriously, explaining in detail each ridiculous situation, as well as the crowds reaction. This is similar to what in other books could be a duel or some kind of debate.
As is true throughout Rabelais, the whole situation is taken seriously which adds greatly to the parody style. If the narrator was mocking Panurge during the debate, the whole situation would lose the comedic effect of being seemingly so serious.
I agree and found this scene very parodic. I especially think that the post-debate conversation is interesting and illuminating in the context of folk humor. Thaumastes immediately says that Panurge has communicated by signs answers to all his questions and probed even the deepest waters of human intelligence (109) when it seems pretty clear to the reader that Panurge was just doing whatever, knowing that Thaumastes was going to interpret the signs however he was going to interpret them. (I don’t know if this is because we’ve talked about it in class, but it reminded me of that shoe scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deDlab6vFgg, circa 2:00) in The Life of Brian, which is parodic in similar ways.) I was also particularly struck by how, after the debate is over, everyone goes out and “[drinks] guts to the ground” (ibid), even though Panurge has supposedly just beat Thaumastes in a debate AND tricked him in the process– even so, they celebrate the occasion together and without malice.
In terms of the Carnivalesque, I’m interested in the role of the spectators of the debate between Pantagruel and Thaumaste in Chapter 13. We often think about the Carnivalesque as being very noisy and interactive, but in this scene Pantagruel silences the audience, saying “By God, if you beggars go on bellowing at me, I will cut off the heads of every one of you” (102). In addition to the silence of the crowd, the actual discussion takes place through gestures rather than speech. This reminded me of our discussion about the role of sound versus silence in the Carnivalesque, which I think we first talked about in relation to Nico’s Sumo Wrestling appetizer. We talked about how even though the audience was silent during matches, you could feel the energy and joy in the room, which seemed to convey a Carnivalesque feeling even without the noise. Similarly in Chapter 13, the audience is still very much a part of the debate even though they are silent. The audience is mentioned several times throughout, such as in the lines, “The theologians, physicians, and surgeons who were present thought that he was inferring by the sign that the Englishman was a leper” (105), “The crowd, who had understood none of the signs, now did get the sense…” (106), and “Those present began to hold their noses, for he was messing himself in anxiety” (108). The spectators are very much a part of this scene and are interacting with it. The spectators are also being laughed at in this chapter, because they are the kind of educated people who only care about winning debates that Pantagruel and Thaumaste denounce in the beginning. Because of this silent interaction and mutual laughter between the debaters and the spectators, I think that the presence of the spectators is an important part of why this chapter is Carnivalesque.
An example of “feasts and celebrations” is in the section where the lady who turned down Panurge so many times gets her comeuppance (p. 115-118.) I think this passage is really interesting to look at with Bakhtin’s idea that feasts are basic carnival foundations for Rabelais, since in this scene it initially seems irrelevant or too unimportant to make a difference. This woman, on the feast of Corpus Christi, is beset by 600,014 dogs, peeing and jumping on her. One of the finest ladies in Paris, she is dressed in her finest clothes and is putting forth her best face for going to church, but is quickly pulled down from her high horse (uncrowning and dissolution of hierarchies) to have the whole town laughing at her. A great an important feast day is ruined, and suddenly doesn’t matter at all (degradation of sacred/serious.)There is an enormous number of dogs around her, and they have seemingly endless bodily functions to impart on her (not sure if “streams” of dog pee count as utopian abundance, but it’s something.)
The only problem I have with seeing this as carnivalesque is that the crowd really does laugh AT her, not with, and she is not having a good time at all. It was “the most horrible trick in all the world” (p 116.) Even though there are a lot of carnivalesque elements here, the event cannot have been carnivalesque to the lady, and therefore I don’t know if it can be carnivalesque at all? It seems more grotesque, even with the degradation of a church feast day and other similar carnivalesque elements, since she does not want to participate in the way she is forced to.
This is really interesting and hits on something I’ve thought I’ve thought a lot about in this class, namely what to think when something has all the main aspects of carnival but still doesn’t feel Carnivalesque.
This happened earlier with the feast at Trimalchio where many of the elements of the Carnivalesque are there, but the reader never really feels comfortable. This scene reminds me of that. While the setting of everything is of course different, I couldn’t really find this scene funny knowing how terrible it was for one person. It really just made Panurge seem terrible. So I definitely agree with this not really being Carnivalesque, and feel this kind of goes against what Bakhtin says about the peoples laughter and the Carnival in Rabelais.
I think it is important to acknowledge the encounter with Panurge and the lady in chapter 14. While the Corpus Christi festival is going on Panurge decided to “play a trick” on her. In this festival the woman dress in their fancy attire and Panurge sprinkles materia medica on her clothes which attracted dogs that pooped and peed on her. This seems not carnivalesque at all because Panurge is the only one in on the joke and he ruined her experience at the festival. Everyone laughs at her expense making it uncarnivalesque. The only way to make this scene carnivalesque would be if the lady was in on it. But there were 600 dogs on her which is excessive.
I was looking at this scene too. I found it hard to find the carnivalesque in it because of the fact that the joke was at the women’s expense. It definitely displayed carnivalesque aspects like you mentioned (the hundreds of thousands of dogs) but it seemed like cruelty without a purpose. I remember examples of carnival that we’ve read where a priest fell off his horse and was dragged to death after he refused to participate in the joke, but this kind of “punishment” is not really in line with that trend. The woman is horrifically punished when the only thing she really did was reject Panurge.
Chapter 16 sees our hero Pantagruel and his crew celebrating their victory over their enemies at the harbor of Achoria. “[Pantagruel] made them rest and eat a good meal on the
shore, pledging drink for drink with their guts to the ground” page 125. Clearly they are deseving of this feast. They are frustrated however, by the lack of rich meats and foods available and by how long they’ve gone without sex. Carapalim complains about how thristy the salted meat they’ve kept on board their voyage is making him. Eusthenes says he hasn’t felt aroused since they left port at Rouen. They grow excited however when their prisoners tells of the tens of thousands of “strumpets” that his army keeps around. Liberating Amaurot, the capital of Utopia as described by Thomas Moore, brings promises of savory abundance. Even though the prisoners tells of a formidably sized and armed enemy, our protagonists just laugh together at the thought of having too many women to enjoy. Through the satisfaction of their bodily urges, one potential center of the carnivalesque will be restored. (I think we could argue whether Utopia even represents a carnivalesque society, however).
I see Rabelais using the very common problems of sailors in this new Age of Discovery as comedic materials in these episodes. From the path of Pantagruel and co’s journey towards the Canary Islands, past the Cape of Good Hope, and along the Swahili coast of East Africa, they are echoing the celebrated voyages of the Portuguese like Vasco Da Gama. I included below a depiction of Da Gama’s famous 1498 landing in present day Malindi, Kenya (spelt Melinda by Rabelais). Literary scholars also sometimes place Utopia through a New World lens, seeing it as More’s reaction to Spanish reports of the wondrous yet totally confounding inhabitants of the Caribbean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vasco_da_Gama_e_o_Rei_de_Melinde_(Centro_Cultural_Portugu%C3%AAs_de_Santos).png
I am really interested in this idea of the carnivalesque emerging due to specific locations, or simply due to travel towards some apparently carnivalesque place. The fact that the journeys of Pantagruel and his men parody (but also simply resemble) the Age of Discovery speaks to, I think, how economic stability guides the carnivalesque into existence. The Age of Discovery (15th-17th centuries) represents a time of general economic prosperity in western Europe, largely due to colonization and the beginnings of globalization. Of course, this brings up the fact that the carnivalesque nature of discovery comes at the expense of those being “discovered.” A lot of history textbooks will refer to this period as a “Golden Age” in Europe, especially as it overlaps somewhat with the Age of Enlightenment, however, gold, and therefore the carnivalesque, comes with a price. I think this is displayed well by Rabelais, considering the violence enacted by Pantagruel’s men. However, this violence is enacted in a more defensive stance, considering how Pantagruel seeks to defend his homeland. I think it is more the lust for plunder and food and women that speaks to the violence of discovery in Pantagruel, as well as the violence of the carnivalesque.
I also wanted to talk briefly about another sort of realm that we hear about only a couple of times, and that is “Faerie,” or “Avalon” (among a few names from a very long list of names for Fairyland). We get a few references to fairies, one on page 122 and another on 122, but the one I was most interested in was on page 118, where it reads, “Gargantua … had been translated to Faërie by Morgan,” an event that allowed the Dipsodes to lay “waste to a large stretch of Utopia.” Here, Rabelais is parodying the journey of King Arthur to Avalon, the place the legendary king goes after fighting Mordred (I think it is also where Excalibur was forged?). In other words, this is a magical place where great miracles occur. I think it is really interesting that Rabelais not only includes Utopia but Fairyland as well in this world. It creates this image of just being able to pick your utopia or travel between them, and if we are to assume that a utopia is carnivalesque, then it speaks to the abundance of carnivalesque locations in this world.
Thank you for explaining the significance of the references to Fairyland, I wasn’t familiar with them. I wonder if the comedic effect of this violent conflict comes from the placement of these potentially carnivalesque sites together despite their very different geneologies. On the one hand we have Utopia, a thoroughly Early Modern invention of a humanist scholar. Fairyland meanwhile, as you describe, has pre-literary origins in the folklore of England. So Rabelais’s text breaks down genre boundaries and collapses different mythologies into one, mediated through the travels of the grotesque Pantagruel. While Pantagruel is a fantastic creature himself, I think the class has demonstrated that his emodiment in the text is relatable in a Bakhtinian sense. By Pantagruel passing through these realms and remaining his old self, I think that Rabelais is degrading these stories and geographies as if they are readily visitable and tangible. Pantagruel is extraordinary in physicality, but not in mentality or morality. Because of his deep-rootedness in those carnivalesque characteristics of laughter, billingsgate, and joy in abundance I think Rabelais opens space or perhaps is circulating peasant interpretations of these legends and narratives. How would an ordinary fellow in this time think about Fairyland and Utopia? I really enjoy reading Pantagruels through this cultural history lens, so thank you for providing more background. We’re seeing at least one part of the reciprocal relationship between high culture and popular culture. The vibrant peasant culture, unable to express itself through lasting written forms is emerging through the filter of the educated Rabelais.
I think you bring up a really interesting point about the reception of fairy tales and folklore in the time of Rabelais with your question of how an “ordinary fellow” in this time would think about Fairyland and Utopia? I am really interested in the implications of Rabelais parodying fairyland, and whether or not his brief mentions of it convey parody at all. The more “informed” philosophy of More’s Utopia is that of the privileged and educated. More draws upon the classics and the humanists in this text, alluding to his educated background. Because of this, parodying More’s Utopia is bringing it down to Earth, making it grotesque and carnivalesque. But what happens when you do the same thing with the traditions of the masses? Of the uneducated? In many ways, I think the oral tradition of telling fairy stories is inherently grotesque and carnivalesque. In one sense because the mere act of telling a story orally requires a literally open body, but also because fairy tales are a very universal, humanizing, thing. In some ways, I think Rabelais understands and respects that (to an extent). He mentions in the prologue Huon of Bordeaux, a 13th-century French romance that features an early version of what would eventually become Shakespeare’s Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He lists Huon of Bordeaux among other “memorable” books (although quickly retracts this sentiment when he says they are nothing compared to his own book). On this list, we also have texts like Robert le Diable (which some say is the inspiration for Robin Goodfellow, aka Puck), a text, like Huon of Bordeaux, that emerged from older folklore. Despite Rabelais placing his own work above these texts, I still think this list speaks to the grotesque and carnivalesque power of the fairy traditions inside them.
I also agree with your idea that Rabelais degrades fairyland and Utopia by making them physical places. While in certain fairy traditions, fairyland is a real place (whether it is underground or west of Ireland), it is also a place shrouded in mystery and often entirely inaccessible. Rabelais refers to certain isles of Faerie being just off the Kingdom of Anchoria. Anchorians are what the inhabitants of Utopia are called in Utopia (I think? It’s been a while since I looked at the text), which implies that fairyland is just off the coast of Pantagruel’s homeland, thus bringing it down to earth and degrading it.
Reading Chapter 16, I was shocked by Panurge’s sexual harassment towards the dame of Paris; even though I already knew how Panurge insults people(I thought I knew), I was still surprised by his unscrupulous methods. However, it reminds me of what we talked about last Thursday. Panurge’s story is not merely a depiction of misogyny or misogynistic social circumstances; similar to the discussion of how to build the best wall in Chapter 11, here we can also see the carnivalesque laughter that Bakhtin talks about. In Chapter 16, Panurge does not fully reveal his nature since the beginning. Since he has always attempted to blind people with empty and pretentious language and inexplicable behavior, he has also blinded himself from a clear vision of his own behavior. Panurge, by spreading chopped dog flesh on the dame, causes all the dogs in the city to chase her and urinate on her luxurious dress. In order to spread the word out, he he says to people in the town that “I think that lady must be on heat; or else some hound has freshly lined her.” Since the dame is in fact not on heat, the truth is then revealed: Panurge is the hound. Panurge inadvertently taunts his own sex addiction in the process of teasing other people, and he should not have realized it in the process.
Like a lot of my classmates, I was drawn to chapter 16 for its overt carnivalesque and grotesque nature. The scene in particular that caught my attention was the slaying of the 600+ knights and feasting that ensues directly after. In their assault, all of the knights are killed except for one; rather than execute this sole survivor, Pantagruel and his men “treated [him] like one of the family” (125). At first glance, this seems to be a very carnivalesque scene in which there is celebration, excess and reversal of the prisoners’ role as an enemy. The reality, however, is much more grim as Rabelais writes that the knight lived in constant fear of being devoured by Pantagruel during the festivities. This fear interrupts the carnivalesque atmosphere and makes it a much darker scene.
As many of you have pointed out, the final sections of “Pantagruel” center around a series of episodes of violence, as Pantagruel and his companions return to Pantagruel’s home country of Utopia to defend its capital city, Amaurot. Violence is an aspect of the carnivalesque that has troubled us all semester, though Bakhtin (as we’ll discuss further on Thursday) embraces it: he sees carnivalesque violence as merry and celebratory, part of a cycle of death and rebirth, and bound up with images that evoke eating, feasting, and carnival gestures of mock hostility. As you work through the violence episodes of these parts of the novel, do you find that Rabelais maintains a carnivalesque tone? What devices, jokes, puns, parodies, images, juxtapositions does Rabelais use to construct *comic* violence?
The biggest way to me that Rabelais constructs this comic violence is with absurdity of situation and numbers. *Thousands* of dogs set upon a woman and *streams* of pee flow freely because of it, Panurge performs countless horrible “tricks” on the people of Paris, ruining their clothes/rubbing terrible substances on them/etc. and somehow does not get in serious trouble, and holds lawsuits so that it is easier to grope women (and somehow wins!) There are many more examples of course but I think the fact that the vast majority of this could never happen is what makes them often funny. They are slightly based on truth, which makes them easier to draw into something bigger (dogs pee everywhere, there were people who pranked each other even a few hundred years ago, and there were probably men who were upset by the change in women’s clothing to have the keyhole in the back.)
Personally (and feel free to disagree/argue,) I actually found Panurge’s lawsuits rather amusing, simply because it feels so absolutely ridiculous and impossible for any lawsuit like that to even take place, much less pass as a law. As a contrast, in the Satryricon, the rape violence really bothered me to read, since that is an actual possibility today, rather than something unthinkable; it’s a different approach to violence that isn’t funny to me. I think that although some of the violence is still disturbing for us today, because Rabelais’s violence seems to be so impossible, it can enter the realm of absurdity and comedy.
Yeah I agree with you Hannah. The mere acts of violence are not carnivalesque but the absurd exaggerated details are what make it fulfill the abundance aspect of the carnivalesque. The tricks that Panurge pulls on people are harsh but again the details within them lighten the air with their absurdity. The dame in Paris had 600 dogs that were peeing a and pooing on her. What Panurge did was quite harsh but details like these add the humor that is required for the carnivalesque.
Going off your last point about how Rabelais’ violence is unthinkable and therefore comic, I wonder if that have something to do with our removal from the historical moment. Obviously the numbers and and events are exaggerated in any case, but to us an infantry war with swords and horses is already ridiculous and unthinkable. For the contemporaneous Rabelais reader, perhaps the exaggeration is much closer to home. In a similar way, the sexual violence in the Satyrica is exaggerated, but exaggerated from the realm of the conceivable. With a loss of context due to its fragmentary nature, we also might lose important/ridiculous framing, though it’s hard to imagine there’s a version that sits well with the modern reader. All this is to say that the impossibility of the violence comes more from its impossible volume than it’s quality, which is a particular kind of impossible that I think relaxes tension– the Satyrica may have been a lost cause because of our (justifiably, I think) sensitivity to sexual violence today.
I agree that removal from the historical moment plays a huge role in why we are able to view this violence as comedic, and I think that in the case of chapters 15 and 16, this could have applied to readers in Rabelais’ time as well. These chapters include a lot of allusions and references to wars and texts about wars from the classical period. The emphasis on the characters’ lineage at the end of chapter 15, the mention of “Athenians who never deliberated until after the deed was done” (122), and references to Xerxes, Herodotus, and Themistocles (129) all recall battles and wars that took place in a setting far removed from not only our time, but Rabelais’ time as well. These allusions not only make the battle into a sort of parody, but they also make the violence feel distant, ancient, and therefore not serious to the reader. Even the style in which these chapters are written, in very specific but not necessarily accurate detail, recalls the style of the older texts that are alluded to, adding to the parody.
I totally agree! One of my favorite parts of Bakhtin’s style of writing is his gross exaggerations, and I think it adds a lot of comic effect. In my appetizer group, Alice brought up how the grotesque appears in horror films, and we were thinking about why this films inspire different reactions than carnivalesque writing. One posited idea was that the dehumanizing of human-like creatures or activities. I think this is somewhat similar but with realism; I picture medieval war in a somewhat specific manner (and not a pleasant one), but when actions are exaggerated so severely, I find it ridiculous and funny, because it’s so obscure that I can’t possibly imagine actual war taking place that way. This removes enough realism for me to picture something as tragic as war in a very comedic manner.
I also agree that the comic effect of Rabelais’ writing comes from the inflated and exaggerated portrayal of different situations (especially regarding the quantity and duration of such events). Helena’s point regarding our removal from the time period and the normalization of things such as knights made me think about the lens through which we view other examples of the carnivalesque in non-contemporary literature. While I think it is impossible to try to put ourselves in the era of medieval feats and sword-bearing knights, I think it’s important to be able to separate the absurdity of the events from the absurdity of our interpretation.
The violence in Rabelais’s book has always been comedic in my perspective, on account of the grotesque purpose or intention behind the violence. In this book, the purpose of violence is not solely for spoils of wealth, territory, or power. Pantagruel’s involvement in the violence is more like his participation in games which are actually under his control. Especially after Panurge’s debut, doing violence becomes a way of entertainment for the young men. In Chapter 16, after Pantagruel pressing the captive for information about the enemies, Panurge quickly turns the attention to the sexual topics. Panurge break the seriousness of the atmosphere after the war and quickly turns violence into an entrance to the carnival. Sacrifice and injury, these topics often related to violence are not mentioned at all in this chapter. Going back to the first half of Chapter 16, even the fighting in the war is replaced by Panurge’s tricks. The violence depicted by Rabelais breaks readers’ expectations of violence in literary works, and through mixing different grotesque elements in the description of violence, it has been rendered carnivalesque.
I definitely agree with this that the depictions of violence subvert readers’ expectations of violence, and thus is considered comic. A part of this comes from the exaggeration involved in these descriptions of violence and war. I think it also comes from how the novel itself views its own violence. Rabelais does not take the violence too seriously, and the main characters are never too concerned about it either. It comes across as very everyday and the whole thing is treated like a joke, so that is how the audience interprets it.
As you complete your reading of “Pantagruel,” Rabelais’ first novel, let’s step back and consider the trajectory of the novel as a whole: Pantagruel’s birth, lineage, youth, and education; his rise to prominence as an intellectual at Paris; his befriending of Panurge, and Panurge’s scurrilous adventures; and finally his return to his native land of Utopia to battle the invading Dipsodes. Bakhtin insists that this absurd novel is a work of profound philosophical and political meaning: not that it has a simple moral or lesson, but that it uses the folk culture of the medieval carnival to degrade, undermine, and then renew and recreate everything serious, powerful, oppressive, hierarchical in Rabelais’ own society. Reading “Pantagruel” through Bakhtin, do you find that this is a work that has any contemporary relevance? Is it worthwhile to read it today? Were you surprised, pleased, disappointed, shocked, or otherwise provoked by this novel?
I certainly think that Pantegruel has a lot of modern relevance. I think one interesting aspect of the novel that is the mockery of Pantegruel’s education. A discussion that is held a lot in my hometown (rural town near Pittsburgh) is the necessity of a college education. Education is structured in a way that filters us straight into college, but for many of us, this may not be correct at first or even ever. My high school had a vocation school (votech) attached (where people could do welding, hvac, cosmetics, mechanics, etc). Even with this however, the norm was to college, and the core classes that the votech students took with us were geared towards students entering college. As a result, this system didn’t comply with a large body of high school students (I forget the exact number, but I think around 35% of my class entered military, workforce, or tech school out of high school) and we were forced to think hard about the impacts of societal and curricular pipelining of high school students into college. It’s interesting that even in Rabelais time, there seems to be a mockery of the college education, potentially suggesting that it was a place where people could go for the sake of esteem and for a facade of being a polished, intelligent member of society.
I was very pleased with this novel. I found Rabelais to be a skilled and funny storyteller. There were many parts of this novel that made somewhat little sense to me, but I still enjoyed the narrative despite lacking historical knowledge. I do also find that as Matt is suggesting, the political impact of Rabelais’ work is somewhat timeless. He uses literature to (trusting Bakhtin on this) give a very critical review of society in a form that was accessible to a large body of people and persisted throughout time.
I thought this post was really interesting. In my high school, plenty of people did not go to college, but for most of us college was a given. That being said, if I look back at the differences in my knowledge between the beginning of high school and starting college, it is very little. While there is some, the majority of the time spent in high school (at least for me) was an incredible waste. That being said, I some how walked away with a better ability to make money than those who dropped out who learned no less.
Now that I am in college, I am kind of having an opposite experience. If I choose to go to grad school (for math), I will be in school for much longer than my friend who is graduating from trade school, but outside of academia my knowledge will be next to useless. Even in academia I will probably be no more financially sound then him, and could easily be less so.
All this is to say I have begun to think more that “higher education”, including high school, does not some how make you more productive or “smarter” (whatever that means). Instead I kind of just think it is a thing people do. It allows us to specialize and is obviously necessary for certain things, but so much time in high school and even after can feel wasted and not at all going towards important education. So I do think parts of Rabelais are still significant now, and can be read in this modern light of mocking something so many view as a crucial part of learning but that is mostly fooling around.
I think these are some really great points and I definitely agree. The tension surrounding education in Rabelais was really interesting to me. In my high school, it was kind of a given that a majority of us would go to college and a lot of what we learned was geared towards preparing us to take the SATs and then do well in college. The majority of my family hasn’t gone to college, and I have a lot of friends who never went to college and think it’s a waste of time. Even just internally, I feel that tension. I know that a degree is required for lots of jobs but I feel like the subjects and skills I’m learning aren’t immediately applicable or transferrable to the real world. So I think it’s an important tension that’s super relevant today and it was interesting to think about it in the context of Rabelais’s work.
Like others who have responded to you, I was also struck by Rabelais’s commentary on education and his mockery of academia, etc. The concept of billingsgate and what language is acceptable in Rabelais has also been something I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been reading. For example, in last week’s reading when Pantagruel was fighting with the guy who was speaking latin-ish French and wasn’t happy until the man started speaking in almost a drawl.
I feel like this concept of common language vs try-hard language vs academic language is also something I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been in college. I’m the first in my immediate family to go to college, and I think one of the biggest culture shocks I experienced as a freshman was having to pick up all the language that surrounds a place like Haverford. Bakhtin’s commentary on the language of the marketplace could be very useful in contemporary America, where there are so many different types of “marketplaces.” For example, the dialects used in urban impoverished neighborhoods is different from what is spoken in rural Appalachia is different from what we hear at Bryn Mawr’s farmer’s market.
I think something that Bakhtin talks about but was really vivified by reading the actual text was this idea of seriousness and its incompatibility with the carnivalesque, particularly with respect to the narrative voice, which every so often would pop in with an equivocation or parenthetical about how I’ll leave this out for now, and I wouldn’t want to lie to you. There’s an intimacy between us and Rabelais even though none of us are really ‘ourselves’ from a textual standpoint. It really emphasized for me how truly serious works refuse that kind of playful meta-banter with the reader and embrace their footlights. Since this is a perennial problem of literature and culture, I think a masterwork like Pantagruel has great relevance for the modern moment. What I’m still wondering is if it actually proliferates the carnivalesque in the Bakhtinian sense among its readership. Coming away from Pantagruel, I have a great appreciation for shamelessness and grotesquerie, but I don’t think my relationship to my own body has changed at all (since the normative context of my life hasn’t changed, or maybe due to a personal failure of inspiration).
Maybe this has something to do with how removed true carnival culture is from our lives, but folk humor nowadays seems very different to folk humor in the ‘olden’ days, though that claim would require further substantiation. I guess I’m also wondering, if folk humor has in fact changed, why *Renaissance* folk humor is so superlative for Bakhtin. Is he moving from folk humor is good to the grotesque/carnivalesque it good, or is he moving from the grotesque/carnivalesque is good to folk humor is good? Is folk humor only good when it invokes the grotesque/carnivalesque?
I think Pantagruel has as much contemporary relevance as you’re willing to pull out of it at a few different levels. It could easily be a funny story, laced with folk humor which is important to those who are studying such things, but reading or not reading it wouldn’t change my life. Another way is that it is an important piece of literature as it affected those at the time who read it, or how it reflects something about the culture at the time; however, all of these are historical views. I think to create modern relevance, we have to look at a little deeper to create the kinds of comparisons we do in this class which make us aware of something in our society we previously hadn’t noticed, give us a new perspective on someone else’s life, etc. It makes me think of the role modern comedians have today, which is to point out those things we take for granted, often talk about both the basest and highest of topics, and much more, and although it makes us laugh, they show us a perspective we either completely agree with and have experienced ourselves or had never thought of before. In comedy we see a perspective of society which is often not accepted which degrades and turns over normality and hierarchies (much like the hell which Epistemon saw, with the high made low and the low made high!) and I think that this perspective can be important even today.
I think that Rabelais’ work has a strong contemporary relevance and what he demonstrates in the book is the human commonality, not a social phenomena unique to a particular region. When I started reading this book, I wondered why Rabelais sets the background of such a bizarre story of a giant in a real human world instead of an imaginary wonderland. Then I gradually realized that, just like Pantagruel’s huge body that cannot be hidden, many elements that need to be hidden in the real world, such as lust, greed, violence, intemperance, and stupidity, are justified in Pantagruel’s world. Among all the intriguing characters and stories, I think the most interesting one is the friendship between Panurge and Pantagruel. Before the appearance of Panurge, Pantagruel does not seem to have fully grown into a giant since he has not yet approached a complete understanding of many abstract concepts. However, Panurge, as a very powerful voice surrounding Pantagruel, has been pushing him towards a “complete giant figure”. Each time he comes up with a tricky contrivance or expresses his personal desire and complacency unabashedly, Pantagruel would receive a “lesson” and be shaped step by step. When Pantagruel is affected by Panurge to a significant extent, he will grow into a complete giant–a creature with all the “shameful” features which people in the real world would like to cover. In fact, it seems to me that the growth of Pantagruel is similar to that of people in the real world. Rabelais tears off a layer that blocks shame and morality, and allows grotesque things to grow recklessly, which would be hidden by the majority in our world.
I agree that Rabelais’ work definitely has relevance today. As others have said, even though we are removed from the historical context of the text, there is enough variation of humor and references in it for everyone to have something to laugh at. Like Helena mentioned, Carnival culture is somewhat removed from modern life, but I think that that only makes Pantagruel more relevant because it gives us a brief sense of the Carnivalesque that removes us for a short period of time from the serious aspects of our lives, which is what Bakhtin says the Carnivalesque is meant to do. I do wonder, though, if Pantagruel is relevant today in the same particular political sense that Bakhtin suggests. Like Jake and Nico discussed above, there are definitely larger societal issues and phenomena (like the emphasis on higher education) that seem to permeate both Rabelais’ work and modern life; however, I’m not sure about what actual use this kind of humor has in the present day. If Carnival humor is meant to have political weight or implications, does Rabelais’ work still carry these larger implications and usefulness today? I definitely think that the text is relevant and relatable to modern audiences, but I guess my question is does this relevance have any potential to have real impacts on the lives of modern readers in the way that Bakhtin seems to think the Carnivalesque should?
After reading everyone’s responses, I’m reminded of a common caveat that modern philosophers often use when theorizing classical examples as aspirational: we can’t go back there, neither to that physical place nor to that historical moment, but engaging with the thing/history/literature is still valuable insofar as we can appropriate it to understand our own contemporary moment and how best to live in it. This is a lot easier said than done, obviously, because we are constantly trying to understand our contemporary moment and how best to live in it, but the perspectives of those before are uniquely useful because they offer a means to understanding what *we* thought before in the history of *thought,* which can help to interrogate both developments since and the reasons for those developments. The way that we approach the body in media is very different than the way Rabelais approaches it, but there’s a through-line between us and him (even if this through-line is only chronological)– how has this inheritance changed over time? And how can we look forward with the past necessarily to our backs? I think by reading something like Rabelais and appreciating the scope of global cultural history (with help from Appetizer presentations!), we can have a stronger (metaphorical) wind in our sails.
Overall, I really enjoyed this novel and the perspective it gave me on elements of the grotesque and carnivalesque. I think we tend to focus a lot on the bigger pieces that make up the two (laughter, lower stratum, etc…) but I often find myself neglecting things like parody as a part of the carnivalesque. Rabelais’ use of parody (of higher education and love among others) was both entertaining and elucidating to its importance in carnivalesque literature.