François Rabelais
pseudonym Alcofribas Nasier
born c. 1494, Poitou, France
died probably April 9, 1553, Paris
French writer and priest who for his contemporaries was an eminent
physician and humanist and for posterity is the author of the comic
masterpiece Gargantua and Pantagruel. The four novels composing this
work are outstanding for their rich use of Renaissance French and for
their comedy, which ranges from gross burlesque to profound satire. They
exploit popular legends, farces, and romances, as well as classical and
Italian material, but were written primarily for a court public and a
learned one. The adjective Rabelaisian applied to scatological humour is
misleading; Rabelais used scatology aesthetically, not gratuitously, for
comic condemnation. His creative exuberance, colourful and wide-ranging
vocabulary, and literary variety continue to ensure his popularity.
Life.
Details of Rabelais’s life are sparse and difficult to interpret. He was
the son of Antoine Rabelais, a rich Touraine landowner and a prominent
lawyer who deputized for the lieutenant-général of Poitou in 1527. After
apparently studying law, Rabelais became a Franciscan novice at La
Baumette (1510?) and later moved to the Puy-Saint-Martin convent at
Fontenay-le-Comte in Poitou. By 1521 (perhaps earlier) he had taken holy
orders.
Rabelais early acquired a reputation for profound humanist learning
among his contemporaries, but the elements of religious satire and
scatological humour in his comic novels eventually left him open to
persecution. He depended throughout his life on powerful political
figures (Guillaume du Bellay, Margaret of Navarre) and on high-ranking
liberal ecclesiastics (Cardinal Jean du Bellay, Bishop Geoffroy
d’Estissac, Cardinal Odet de Châtillon) for protection in those
dangerous and intolerant times in France.
Rabelais was closely associated with Pierre Amy, a liberal Franciscan
humanist of international repute. In 1524 the Greek books of both
scholars were temporarily confiscated by superiors of their convent,
because Greek was suspect to hyperorthodox Roman Catholics as a
“heretical” language that opened up the original New Testament to study.
Rabelais then obtained a temporary dispensation from Pope Clement VII
and was removed to the Benedictine house of Saint-Pierre-de-Maillezais,
the prior of which was his bishop, Geoffroy d’Estissac. He never liked
his new order, however, and he later satirized the Benedictines,
although he passed lightly over Franciscan shortcomings.
Rabelais studied medicine, probably under the aegis of the
Benedictines in their Hôtel Saint-Denis in Paris. In 1530 he broke his
vows and left the Benedictines to study medicine at the University of
Montpellier, probably with the support of his patron, Geoffroy
d’Estissac. Graduating within weeks, he lectured on the works of
distinguished ancient Greek physicians and published his own editions of
Hippocrates’ Aphorisms and Galen’s Ars parva (“The Art of Raising
Children”) in 1532. As a doctor he placed great reliance on classical
authority, siding with the Platonic school of Hippocrates but also
following Galen and Avicenna. During this period an unknown widow bore
him two children (François and Junie), who were given their father’s
name and were legitimated by Pope Paul IV in 1540.
After practicing medicine briefly in Narbonne, Rabelais was appointed
physician to the hospital of Lyon, the Hôtel-Dieu, in 1532. In the same
year, he edited the medical letters of Giovanni Manardi, a contemporary
Italian physician. It was during this period that he discovered his true
talent. Fired by the success of an anonymous popular chapbook, Les
Grandes et inestimables cronicques du grant et énorme géant Gargantua,
he published his first novel, Les horribles et épouvantables faits et
prouesses du très renommé Pantagruel, roy des Dipsodes (1532; “The
Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of the Renowned Pantagruel, King
of the Dipsodes”), under the pseudonym Alcofribas Nasier (an obvious
anagram of his real name). Pantagruel is slighter in length and
intellectual depth than his later novels, but nothing of this quality
had been seen before in French in any similar genre. Rabelais displayed
his delight in words, his profound sense of the comedy of language
itself, his mastery of comic situation, monologue, dialogue, and action,
and his genius as a storyteller who was able to create a world of
fantasy out of words alone. Within the framework of a mock-heroic,
chivalrous romance, he laughed at many types of sophistry, including
legal obscurantism and hermeticism, which he nevertheless preferred to
the scholasticism of the Sorbonne. One chapter stands out for its
sustained seriousness, praising the divine gift of fertile matrimony as
a compensation for death caused by Adam’s fall. Pantagruel borrows
openly from Sir Thomas More’s Utopia in its reference to the war between
Pantagruel’s country, Utopia, and the Dipsodes, but it also preaches a
semi-Lutheran doctrine—that no one but God and his angels may spread the
gospel by force. Pantagruel is memorable as the book in which
Pantagruel’s companion, Panurge, a cunning and witty rogue, first
appears.
Though condemned by the Sorbonne in Paris as obscene, Pantagruel was
a popular success. It was followed in 1533 by the Pantagrueline
Prognostication, a parody of the almanacs, astrological predictions that
exercised a growing hold on the Renaissance mind. In 1534 Rabelais left
the Hôtel-Dieu to travel to Rome with the bishop of Paris, Jean du
Bellay. He returned to Lyon in May of that year and published an edition
of Bartolomeo Marliani’s description of Rome, Topographia antiquae
Romae. He returned to the Hôtel-Dieu but left it again in February 1535,
upon which the authorities of the Lyon hospital appointed someone else
to his post.
La vie inestimable du grand Gargantua (“The Inestimable Life of the
Great Gargantua”) belongs to this period. The second edition is dated
1535; the first edition was probably published in 1534, though it lacks
the title page in the only known copy. In Gargantua Rabelais continues
to exploit medieval romances mock-heroically, telling of the birth,
education, and prowesses of the giant Gargantua, who is Pantagruel’s
father. Much of the satire—for example, mockery of the ignorant
trivialization of the mystical cult of emblems and of erroneous theories
of heraldry—is calculated to delight the court; much also aims at
delighting the learned reader—for example, Rabelais sides with humanist
lawyers against legal traditionalists and doctors who accepted 11-month,
or even 13-month, pregnancies. Old-fashioned scholastic pedagogy is
ridiculed and contrasted with the humanist ideal of the Christian
prince, widely learned in art, science, and crafts and skilled in
knightly warfare. The war between Gargantua and his neighbour, the
“biliously choleric” Picrochole, is partly a private satire of an enemy
of Rabelais’s father and partly a mocking of Charles V, the Holy Roman
emperor, and the imperial design of world conquest. Gargantua commands
the military operations, but some of the exploits are carried out by
Frère Jean (the Benedictine). Though he is lean, lecherous, dirty, and
ignorant, Frère Jean is redeemed by his jollity and active virtue; for
his fellow monks are timorous and idle, delighting in “vain repetitions”
of prayers. Gargantua’s last major episode centres on the erection of
the Abbey of Thélème, a monastic institution that rejects poverty,
celibacy, and obedience; instead it welcomes wealth and the well-born,
praises the aristocratic life, and rejoices in good marriages.
After Gargantua, Rabelais published nothing new for 11 years, though
he prudently expurgated his two works of overbold religious opinions. He
continued as physician to Jean du Bellay, who had become a cardinal, and
his powerful brother Guillaume, and in 1535 Rabelais accompanied the
cardinal to Rome. There he regularized his position by making a
“supplication” to the pope for his “apostasy” (i.e., his unauthorized
departure from the Benedictine monastery); the pope issued a bull
freeing Rabelais from ecclesiastical censure and allowing him to reenter
the Benedictine order. Rabelais then arranged to enter the Benedictine
convent at Saint-Maur-les-Fossés, where Cardinal Jean du Bellay was
abbot. The convent was secularized six months later, and Rabelais became
a secular priest, authorized to exercise his medical profession.
In May 1537 Rabelais was awarded the doctorate of medicine of
Montpellier; and he delivered, with considerable success, a course of
lectures on Hippocrates’ Prognostics. He was at Aigues-Mortes in July
1538 when Charles V met the French king Francis I, but his movements are
obscure until he followed Guillaume du Bellay to the Piedmont in 1542.
Guillaume died in January 1543, and to Rabelais his death meant the loss
of an important patron. That same year Geoffroy d’Estissac died as well,
and Rabelais’s novels were condemned by the Sorbonne and the Parlement
of Paris. Rabelais sought protection from the French king’s sister
Margaret, queen of Navarre, dedicating to her the third book of the
Gargantua-Pantagruel series, Tiers livre des faits et dits héroïques du
noble Pantagruel (1546; “Third Book of the Heroic Deeds and Words of the
Noble Pantagruel”). Despite its royal privilège (i.e., license to
print), the book was immediately condemned for heresy by the Sorbonne,
and Rabelais fled to Metz (an imperial city), remaining there until
1547.
The Tiers livre is Rabelais’s most profound work. Pantagruel has now
deepened into a Stoico-Christian inerrant sage; Panurge, a lover of self
and deluded by the devil, is now an adept at making black seem white.
Panurge hesitates: Should he marry? Will he be cuckolded, beaten, robbed
by his wife? He consults numerous prognostications, both good Platonic
ones and less reputable ones—all to no effect because of his self-love.
He consults a good theologian, a Platonic doctor, and a Skeptic
philosopher approved of by the learned giants, but his problem is not
treated by the judge Bridoye, who—like Roman law in cases of extreme
perplexity—trusts in Providence and decides cases by casting lots.
Panurge trusts in no one, least of all in himself. It is therefore
decided to consult the oracle of the Dive Bouteille (“Sacred Bottle”),
and the travelers set out for the temple. The Tiers livre ends
enigmatically with a mock eulogy in which hemp is praised for its myriad
uses.
From 1547 onward, Rabelais found protection again as physician to
Cardinal Jean du Bellay and accompanied him to Rome via Turin, Ferrara,
and Bologna. Passing through Lyon, he gave his printer his incomplete
Quart livre (“Fourth Book”), which, as printed in 1548, finishes in the
middle of a sentence but contains some of his most delightful comic
storytelling. In Rome Rabelais sent a story to his newest protector in
the Guise family, Charles of Lorraine, 2nd Cardinal de Lorraine; the
story described the “Sciomachie” (“Simulated Battle”) organized by
Cardinal Jean to celebrate the birth of Louis of Orléans, second son of
Henry II of France.
In January 1551 the Cardinal de Guise presented him with two
benefices at Meudon and Jambet, though Rabelais never officiated or
resided there. In 1552, through the influence of the cardinal, Rabelais
was able to publish—with a new prologue—the full Quart livre des faits
et dits héroïques du noble Pantagruel (“Fourth Book of the Heroic Deeds
and Words of the Noble Pantagruel”), his longest book. Despite its royal
privilège, this work, too, was condemned by the Sorbonne and banned by
Parlement, but Rabelais’s powerful patrons soon had the censorship
lifted. In 1553 Rabelais resigned his benefices. He died shortly
thereafter and was buried in Saint-Paul-des-Champs, Paris.
In 1562 there appeared in Lyon the Isle sonante, allegedly by
Rabelais. It was expanded in 1564 into the so-called Cinquiesme et
dernier livre (“Fifth and Last Book”). This work is partly satirical,
partly an allegory; the Sacred Bottle—the ostensible quest of the Quart
livre—is consulted, and the heroes receive the oraculous advice: “drink”
(symbolizing wisdom?). This work cannot be by Rabelais as it stands.
Some scholars believe it to be based on his (lost) drafts, while others
deny it any authenticity whatsoever.
Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Rabelais’s purpose in the four books of his masterpiece was to entertain
the cultivated reader at the expense of the follies and exaggerations of
his times. If he points lessons, it is because his life has taught him
something about the evils of comatose monasticism, the trickery of
lawyers, the pigheaded persistence of litigants, and the ignorance of
grasping physicians. Rabelais was a friar with unhappy memories of his
monastery; his father had wasted his money on lengthy litigation with a
neighbour over some trivial water rights; and he himself was earning his
living by medicine in an age when the distinction between physician and
quack was needle-fine. Though it is an entertainment, therefore,
Gargantua and Pantagruel is also serious. Its principal narrative is
devoted to a voyage of discovery that parodies the travelers’ tales
current in Rabelais’s day. Rabelais begins lightheartedly; his travelers
merely set out to discover whether Panurge will be cuckolded if he
marries. A dozen oracles have already hinted at Panurge’s inevitable
fate, yet each time he has reasoned their verdict away; and the voyage
itself provides a number of amusing incidents. Yet, like Don Quixote’s,
it is a fundamentally serious quest directed toward a true goal, the
discovery of the secret of life.
Intoxication—with life, with learning, with the use and abuse of
words—is the prevailing mood of the book. Rabelais himself provides the
model of the exuberant creator. His four books provide a cunning mosaic
of scholarly, literary, and scientific parody. One finds this in its
simplest form in the catalog of the library of St. Victor, in the list
of preposterous substantives or attributes in which Rabelais delights,
and in the inquiry by means of Virgilian lots into the question of
Panurge’s eventual cuckoldom. But at other times the humour is more
complicated and works on several levels. Gargantua’s campaign against
King Picrochole (book 1), for instance, contains personal, historical,
moral, and classical points closely interwoven. The battles are fought
in Rabelais’s home country, in which each hamlet is magnified into a
fortified city. Moreover, they also refer to the feud between Rabelais
the elder and his neighbour. They also comment on recent historical
events involving France and the Holy Roman Empire, however, and can even
be read as propaganda against war, or at least in favour of the more
humane conduct of hostilities. On yet another level, Rabelais’s account
of this imaginary warfare can be taken as mockery of the classical
historians: Gargantua’s speech to his defeated enemy (book 1, chapter
50) echoes one put into the mouth of the Roman emperor Trajan by Pliny
the Younger.
Despite these complex levels of reference, Rabelais was not a
self-conscious writer; he made his book out of the disorderly contents
of his mind. As a result it is ill-constructed, and the same thoughts
are repeated in Gargantua that he had already set down in Pantagruel;
the nature of an ideal education, for example, is examined in both
books. Moreover, the main action of the story, which arises from the
question of Panurge’s intended marriage, only begins in the third book.
The first, Gargantua, throws up the enormous contradiction that has made
the interpretation of Rabelais’s own intellectual standpoint almost
impossible. On the one hand we have the rumbustious festivities that
celebrate the giant’s peculiarly miraculous birth and the “Rabelaisian”
account of his childish habits; and on the other a plea for an
enlightened education. Again, the brutal slaughter of the Picrocholine
wars, in which Rabelais obviously delights, is followed by the utopian
description of Thélème, the Renaissance ideal of a civilized community.
Pantagruel follows the same pattern with variations, introducing Panurge
but omitting Frère Jean, and putting Pantagruel in the place of his
father, Gargantua. In fact the characters are not strongly
individualized. They exist only in what they say, being so many voices
through whom the author speaks. Panurge, for instance, has no consistent
nature. A resourceful and intelligent poor scholar in Pantagruel, he
becomes a credulous buffoon in the third book and an arrant coward in
the fourth.
The third and fourth books pursue the story of the inquiry and
voyage, and in them Rabelais’s invention is at its height. The first two
books contain incidents close in feeling to the medieval fabliaux, but
the third and fourth books are rich in a new, learned humour. Rabelais
was a writer molded by one tradition, the medieval Roman Catholic, whose
sympathies lay to a greater extent with another, the Renaissance or
classical. Yet when he writes in praise of the new humanist ideals—in
the chapters on education, on the foundation of Thélème, or in praise of
drinking from the “sacred bottle” of learning or enlightenment—he easily
becomes sententious. His head is for the new learning, while his flesh
and heart belong to the old. It is in his absurd, earthy, and exuberant
inventions, which are medieval in spirit even when they mock at medieval
acceptances, that Rabelais is a great, entertaining, and worldly wise
writer.
M.A. Screech
John Michael Cohen
Gustave Dore
born Jan. 6, 1832, Strasbourg, Fr.
died Jan. 23, 1883, Paris
French printmaker, one of the most prolific and successful book illustrators
of the late 19th century, whose exuberant and bizarre fantasy created vast
dreamlike scenes widely emulated by Romantic academicians.
In 1847 he went to Paris and from 1848 to 1851 produced weekly lithographic
caricatures for the Journal pour Rire and several albums of lithographs
(1847–54). His later fame rested on his wood-engraved book illustrations.
Employing more than 40 woodcutters, he produced over 90 illustrated books.
Among his finest were an edition of the Oeuvres de Rabelais (1854), Les
Contes drolatiques of Balzac (1855), thelarge folio Bible (1866), and the
Inferno of Dante (1861). He also painted many large compositions of a
religious or historical character and had some success as a sculptor; his
work in those media, however, lacks the spontaneous vivacity of his
illustrations.
