Online Encyclopedia
Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.
RABELAIS, FRANCOIS (c. 1490—1553)
Online EncyclopediaEncyclopedia Home :: PYR-RAY
del.icio.us it!
|
See also:RABELAIS, See also:FRANCOIS (c. 1490—1553) , See also:French humorist, was See also:born at See also:Chinon on the See also:Vienne in the See also:province of See also:Touraine. The date of his See also:birth is wholly uncertain: it has been put by tradition, and by authorities See also:long subsequent to his See also:death, as 1483, 1490, and 1495. There is nothing in the See also:positive facts of his See also:life which would not suit tolerably well with any of these See also:dates; most 17th-See also:century authorities give the earliest, and this also accords best with the See also:age of the eldest of the Du Bellay See also:brothers, with whom Rabelais was (perhaps) at school. In favour of the latest it is urged that, if Rabelais was born in 1483, he must have been See also:forty-seven when he entered at See also:Montpellier, and proportionately and unexpectedly old at other known periods of his life. In favour of the See also:middle date, which has, as far as See also:recent authorities are concerned, the See also:weight of consent in its favour, the testimony of See also:Guy Patin (1601-1672), a See also:witness of some merit and not too far removed in point of See also:time, is invoked. The only contribution which need be made here to the controversy is to point out that if Rabelais was born in 1483 he must have been an old See also:man when he died, and that scarcely even tradition speaks of him as such. With regard to his birth, parentage, youth, and See also:education everything depends upon this tradition, and it is not until he was according to one extreme See also:hypothesis See also:thirty-six, according to the other extreme twenty-four, that we have solid testimony respecting him. In the See also:year 1519, on the 5th of See also:April, the Francois Rabelais of See also:history emerges. The monks of Fontenay le See also:Comte bought some See also:property (See also:half an See also:inn in the See also:town), and among their signatures to the See also:deed of See also:purchase is that of Francois Rabelais. Before this all is cloudland. It is said that he had four brothers and no sisters, that his See also:father had a See also:country property called La Deviniere, and was either an See also:apothecary or a See also:tavern-keeper. Half a century after his death De See also:Thou mentions that the See also:house in which he was born had become a tavern and then a See also:tennis-See also:court. It still stands at the corner of a See also:street called the See also:Rue de la Lamproie, and the tradition may be correct. An indistinct allusion of his own has been taken to mean that he was tonsured in childhood at seven or nine years old; and tradition says that he was sent to the See also:convent of Seuilly. From Seuilly at an unknown date tradition takes him either to the university of See also:Angers or to the convent school of La Baumette or La 'Basmette, founded by See also:good See also: 25graphical. The letters of the well-known Greek See also:scholar Budaeus, two of which are addressed to Rabelais himself and several more to his friend and See also:fellow-See also: In 1532, however, he had moved from Montpellier to See also:Lyons. Here he plunged into manifold work, See also:literary and professional. He was appointed before the beginning of November physician to the Hotel Dieu, with a See also:salary of forty livres per annum, and lectured on See also:anatomy with demonstrations from the human subject. He edited for See also:Sebastian See also:Gryphius, in the single year 1532, the medical Epistles of Giovanni Manardi, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, with the Ars Parva of Galen, and an edition of two supposed Latin documents, which, however, happened unluckily to be forgeries.
At this time Lyons was the centre and to a great extent the headquarters of an unusually enlightened society, and indirectly it is clear that Rabelais became intimate with this society. A See also:manuscript distich, which was found in the See also:Toulouse library, deals with the death of an See also:infant named Theodule, whose country was Lyons and his father Rabelais, but we know nothing more about the See also:matter. What makes the Lyons sojourn of the greatest real importance is that at this time probably appeared the beginnings of the work which was to make Rabelais immortal. It is necessary to say " probably," because the See also:strange uncertainty which rests on so much of his life and writings exists here also. There is no doubt that both Gargantua and Pantagruel were popular names of giants in the Middle Ages, though, curiously enough, no mention of the former in French literature much before Rabelais's time has been traced. In 1526, however, See also: EI
and the terrible See also:mare. But there is no trace of the See also:action or other characters of Gargantua that was to be, nor is the manner of the piece in the least worthy of Rabelais. No one supposes that he wrote it, though it has been supposed that he edited it and that in reality it is older than 1J32, and may be the See also:direct subject of Bordigne's allusion six years earlier. What does, however, seem probable is that the first book of Pantagruel (the second of the whole work) was composed with a definite view to this See also:chap book and not to the existing first book of Gargantua, which was written afterwards, when Rabelais discovered the popularity of his work and See also:felt that it ought to have some worthier starting-point than the Grandes chroniques. The earliest known and dated edition of Pantagruel is of 1533, of Gargantua 1535, though this would not be of itself conclusive, especially as we actually possess See also:editions of both which, though undated, seem to be earlier. But the definite description of Gargantua in the See also:title as " Pere de Pantagruel," the omission of the words " second livre " in the title of the first book of Pantagruel while the second and third are duly entitled " tiers " and " quart," the remarkable fact that one of the most important personages, See also:Friar See also: It is also thought that the first edition of Gargantua may have appeared this year. In the See also:spring of 1535 the authorities of the Lyons See also:hospital, considering that Rabelais had twice absented himself without leave, elected Pierre de See also:Castel in his See also:room; but the documents which exist do not seem to infer that any blame was thought due to him, and the See also:appointment of his successor was once definitely postponed in case he should return. At the end of 1535 Rabelais once more accompanied Jean du Bellay, now a See also:cardinal, to Rome and stayed there till April in the next year. This stay furnishes some See also:biographical documents of importance in the shape of letters to Geoffroy d'Estissac, of the already-mentioned Supplicatio pro Apostasia, and of the See also:bull of See also:absolution which was the reply to it. This bull not only freed Rabelais from ecclesiastical censure, but gave him the right to return to the order of St See also:Benedict when he See also:chose, and to practise medicine. He took See also:advantage of this bull and became a See also:canon of St Maur. In 1537 he took his See also:doctor's degree at Montpellier, lectured on the Greek See also:text of Hippocrates, and next year made a public anatomical demonstration. During these two years he seems to have resided either at Montpellier or at Lyons. But in 1539 he entered the service of See also:Guillaume du Bellay-Langey, See also:elder See also:brother of Jean, and would appear to have been with him (he was See also:governor of See also:Piedmont) till his death on 9th See also:January 1543. Rabelais wrote a panegyrical memoir of Guillaume, which is lost, and the year before saw the publication of an edition of Gargantua and Pantagruel, book i., together (both had been repeatedly reprinted separately), in which some dangerous expressions were cut away. Nothing at all is known of his life, whereabouts, or occupations till the publication of the third book, which appeared in 1546, " avec See also:privilege du roi," which had been given in September 1545. Up to this time Rabelais, despite the condemnation of the See also:Sorbonne referred to above, had experienced nothing like persecution or difficulty. Even the spiteful or treacherous See also:act of Dolet, who in 1542 reprinted the earlier See also:form of the books which Rabelais had just slightly modified, seems to have done him no harm. But the See also:storm of persecution which towards the end of the reign of See also:Francis I. was fatal to Dolet himself and to See also:Des Periers, while it exiled and virtually killed See also:Marot, threatened him. There is no positive evidence of any See also:measures taken or threatened against him; but it is certain that he passed nearly the whole of 1546 and See also:part of 1547 at See also:Metz in See also:Lorraine as physician to the town at the salary of 120 livres, and See also:Sturm speaks of him as having been " See also:cast out of See also:France by the times " (with the exclamation See also:feu -riav xpovwv) in a contemporary letter, and says that he himself in another letter gives a doleful See also:account of, his pecuniary affairs and asks for assistance. At Francis's death on 31st See also: He certainly held the living but two years, resigning it in January 1552 along with his other See also:benefice, and it is noteworthy that at the episcopal visitation of 1551 he was not See also:present. To this supposed See also:residence at Meudon and to the previous stay at Rome, however, are attached two of the most mischievous items of the legend, though fortunately two of the most easily refutable. It is said that Rabelais met and quarrelled with See also:Joachim du Bellay the poet at Rome, and with See also:Ronsard at Meudon and elsewhere, that this caused a See also:breach between him and the Pleiade, that he satirized its classicizing tendencies in the See also:episode of the See also:Limousin scholar, and that Ronsard after his death avenged himself by a libellous See also:epitaph. The facts are these. Nothing is heard of the See also:quarrel with Du Bellay or of any See also:meeting with him, nothing of the meetings and bickerings with Ronsard, till 1697, when Bernier tells the See also:story without any authority. The supposed allusions to the Pleiade date from a time when Ronsard was a small boy, and are mainly borrowed from an earlier writer still, Geoffroy Tory. Lastly, the epitaph, read impartially, is not libellous at all, but simply takes up the vein of the opening scenes of Gargantua in reference to Gargantua's author. There is indeed no See also:reason to suppose that either Ronsard or Du Bellay was a fervent admirer of Rabelais, for they belonged to a very different. literary school; but there is absolutely no evidence of any enmity between them, and Du Bellay actually refers to Rabelais with admiration. Some chapters of Rabelais's See also:fourth book had been published in 1548, but the whole did not appear till 1552. The Sorbonne censured it and the See also:parliament suspended the See also:sale, taking advantage of the king's See also:absence from See also:Paris. But it was soon relieved of the suspension. He died, it is said, on the 9th of April 1553, but actual history is quite silent See also:save on the point that he was not alive in May of the next year, and the legends about his deathbed utterances—" La See also:farce est jouee," " Je vais chercher un grand peut-etre," &c.— are altogether ages—with its subsequent and reformed stage, in the account of which all the best and noblest ideas of the humanist Renaissance in reference to pedagogy are put with exceptional force. Gargantua is recalled from Paris, whither he had been sent to finish his education, owing to a See also:war between his father, Grandgosier, and the neighbouring king, Picrochole. This war is described at great length, the See also:chief See also:hero of it being the monk, Friar John, a very unclerical cleric, in whom Rabelais greatly delights. Picrochole defeated and See also:peace made, Gargantua establishes the See also:abbey of Thelema in another of Rabelais's most elaborate literary passages, where all the points most See also:obnoxious to him in monastic life are indicated by the See also:assignment of their exact opposites to this See also:model convent. The second book, which introduces the See also:principal hero of the whole,, Pantagruel, Gargantua's son, is, on any other hypothesis but that already suggested of its See also:prior composition, very difficult to explain, but in itself it is intelligible enough. Pantagruel goes through something like a second edition (really a first) of the educational experiences of his father. Like him, he goes to Paris, and there meets with Panurge, the principal See also:triumph of Rabelaisian See also:character-See also:drawing, and the most See also:original as well as puzzling figure of the book. Panurge has almost all intellectual accomplishments, but is totally devoid of morality: he is a See also:coward, a drunkard, a lecher, a spiteful trickster, a spendthrift, but all the while infinitely amusing. This book, like the other, has a war in its latter part; Gargantua scarcely appears in it and Friar John not at all. It is not till the opening of the third book that the most important action begins. This arises from Panurge's determination to marry—a determination, however, which is very half-hearted, and which leads him to consult a vast number of authorities, each giving occasion for See also:satire of a more or less complicated See also:kind. At last it is determined that Pantagruel and his followers (Friar John has reappeared in the See also:suite of the See also:prince) shall set See also:sail to consult the See also:Oracle of the Dive Bouteille. The book ends with the obscurest passage of the whole, an elaborate eulogy of the " See also:herb pantagruelion," which appears to be, if it is anything, See also:hemp. Only two probable explanations of this have been offered, the one seeing in it an anticipation of See also:Joseph de See also:Maistre's glorification of the executioner, the other a eulogy of work, hemp being on the whole the most serviceable of See also:vegetable products for that purpose. The fourth and fifth books are entirely taken up with a description of the voyage. Many strange places with stranger names are visited, some of them offering obvious satire on human institutions, others, except by the most far-fetched explanations, resolvable into nothing but sheer extravaganza. At last the See also:Land of Lanterns, borrowed from See also:Lucian, is reached, and the Oracle of the See also:Bottle is consulted. This yields the single word " Trinq," which the attendant priestess declares to be the most gracious and intelligible she has ever heard from it. Panurge takes this as a See also:sanction of his See also:marriage, and the book ends abruptly. This singular See also:romance is diversified by, or, to speak more properly, it is the vehicle of the most bewildering abundance of digression, See also:burlesque amplification, covert satire on things See also:political, social and religious, See also:miscellaneous erudition of the literary and scientific kind. Everywhere the author See also:lays stress on the excellence of " Pantagruelism," and the reader who is himself a Pantagruelist (it is perfectly idle for any other to attempt the book) soon discovers what this means. It is, in See also:plain See also:English, See also:humour. The See also:definition of humour is a generally acknowledged crux, and till it is defined the definition of Pantagruelism will be in the same position. But that it consists in the See also:extension of a wide sympathy to all human affairs, together with a comprehension of their vanity, may be said as safely as anything else. Moroseness and dogmatism are as far from the Pantagruelism of Rabelais as maudlin sentimentality or dilettantism. Perhaps the chief things lacking in his attitude are, in the first See also:place, reverence, of which, however, from a few passages, it is clear he was by no means totally devoid, and secondly, an appreciation of See also:passion and See also:poetry. Here and there there are touches of the latter, as in the portrait of Quint-essence, but passion is everywhere absent—an absence for which the comic structure and plan of the book do not by any means See also:supply a See also:complete explanation. For a See also:general estimate of Rabelais's literary character and influence the reader may be referred to the See also:article FRENCH LITERATURE. But some detailed remarks must be given here. There are three questions without the discussion of which this See also:notice of one of the foremost writers of the See also:world would not be worthy of its present place. These are—What is the general See also:drift and purpose of Gargantua and Pantagruel, supposing there to be any? What See also:defence can be offered, if any defence is needed, for the extra-See also:ordinary See also:licence of See also:language and imagery which the author has permitted himself? What was his attitude towards the great questions of See also:religion, See also:philosophy and politics? These questions succeed each other in the order of reason, and the See also:answer to each assists the See also:resolution of the next. There have been few more remarkable instances of the lues commentatoria than the work of the editors of Rabelais. Almost every one appears to have started with a Rabelais ready made in his See also:head, and to have, so to speak, read that Rabelais into the book. Those who have not done this, like Le Duchat, Motteux apocryphal. The same may be said of the numerous See also:silly education of his hero—a satire on the degraded See also:schools of the middle stories told of his life, such as that of his procuring a See also:free
passage to Paris by inscribing packets " See also:Poison for the king," and so forth.
Ten years after the publication of the fourth book and nine after the supposed date of the author's death there appeared at Lyons sixteen chapters entitled 1p'le sonnante See also:par maistre Francois Rabelais, and two years later the entire fifth book was printed as such. In 1567 it took place with the others, and has ever since appeared with them. But from the beginning of the 17th century there have never been wanting disbelievers in its authenticity. The controversy is one of some intricacy, but as it is also one of capital importance in literary history the heads of it at least must be given here. The opponents of the book rely (r) on the testimony of a certain See also: See also:Stein, un Rabelais apocryphe (1901), repeated and confirmed by M. A. Lefranc in the Revue des etudes Rabelaisiennes (1905), disposed of the matter. The substance of the apocryphal document is quite different from our fifth book. Gargantua and Pantagruel, notwithstanding their high literary See also:standing and the frequency with which certain passages from them are cited, are, owing partly to their archaism of language and partly to the extreme licence which their author has allowed himself, so little read that no notice of them or of him could be complete without some See also:sketch of their contents. The first book, Gargantua, describes the birth of that hero (a giant and the son of gigantic parents), whose nativity is ushered in by the account of a tremendous feast. In this the burlesque exaggeration of the pleasures of eating and drinking, which is one of the chief exterior notes of the whole work, is pushed to an extreme—an extreme which has attracted natural but perhaps undue See also:attention. Very early, however, the author becomes serious in contrasting the early and Esmangart, have generally committed the See also:error of tormenting themselves and their author to find individual explanations of personages and events. The extravagance of the last-named commentator takes the form of seeing elaborate allegories; that of some others devotes itself chiefly to identifying the characters of the romance with more or less famous See also:historical persons. But the first blunder, that of forming a general hypothetical conception of Rabelais and then adjusting See also:interpretation of the work to it, is the commoner. This conception, however, has singularly varied. According to some expositors, among whom one of the latest and not the least respectable is M. See also:Fleury, Rabelais is a sober reformer, an apostle of See also:earnest work, of See also:sound education, of rational if not dogmatic religion, who wraps up his morals in a farcical envelope partly to make them go down with the vulgar and partly to See also:shield himself from the consequences of his reforming zeal. According to others, of whom we have had in See also:England a distinguished example in See also:Sir See also:Walter See also:Besant, Rabelais is all this but with a difference. He is not religious at all; he is more or less anti-religious; and his book is more or less of a general protest against any attempt to explain supernaturally the riddle of the See also:earth. According to a third class, the most distinguished recent representative of which was M. Paul See also:Lacroix, the Rabelaisian legend does not so much err in principle as it invents in fact. Rabelais is the incarnation of the " esprit Gaulois," a jovial, careless soul, not destitute of See also:common sense or even acute intellectual See also:power, but first of all a good fellow, rather preferring a broad jest to a'See also:fine-pointed one, and rollicking through life like a good-natured undergraduate. Of all these views it may be said that those who hold them are obliged to shut their eyes to many things in the book and to see in it many which are not there. The religious part of the matter will be dealt with presently; but it is impossible to think that any unbiased judge See also:reading Rabelais can hold the See also:grave-philosopher view or the reckless-goodfellow view without modifications and allowances which practically deprive either of any value. Those who, as it has been happily put, identify Rabelais with Pantagruel, strive in vain, on any view intellectually consistent or morally respectable, to account for the vast ocean of pure or impure See also:laughter and foolery which surrounds the few solid islets of sense and reason and devotion. Those who in the same way identify Rabelais with Panurge can never explain the education See also:scheme, the See also:solemn apparition of Gargantua among the farcical and fantastic See also:variations on Panurge's See also:wedding, and many other passages; while, on the other hand, those who insist on a definite propaganda of any kind must justify themselves by their own power of seeing things invisible to plain men. But these vagaries are not only unjustifiable; they are entirely unnecessary. No one reading Rabelais without parti pris, but with a good know-ledge of the history and literature of his own times and the times which preceded him, can have much difficulty in appreciating his book. He had evidently during his long and studious sojourn in the cloister (a sojourn which was certainly not less than five-andtwenty years, while it may have been five-and-thirty, and of which the studiousness rests not on legend but on documentary evidence) acquired a vast stock of learning. He was, it is clear, thoroughly penetrated with the instincts, the hopes, and the ideas of the Renaissance in the form which it took in France, in England and in Germany—a form, that is to say, not merely humanist but full of aspirations for social and political improvement, and above all for a joyous, varied, and non-ascetic life. He had thoroughly convinced himself of the abuses to which monachism See also:lent itself. Lastly, he had the spirit of lively satire and of willingness desipere in loco which frequently goes with the love of books. It is in the highest degree improbable that in beginning his great work he had any definite purpose or intention. The See also:habit of burlesquing the See also:romans d'aventures was no new one, and the form lent itself easily to the two literary exercises to which he was most disposed—See also:apt and See also:quaint See also:citation from and variation on the See also:classics and satirical See also:criticism of the life he saw around him. The immense popularity of the first two parts induced him to continue them, and by degrees (the genuineness of the fifth book, at any See also:rate in substance, is here assumed) the possibility of giving the whole something like a consistent form and a See also:regular conclusion presented itself to him. The voyage in particular allowed the widest licence of satirical allusion, and he availed himself of that licence in the widest sense. Here and there persons are glanced at, while the whole scenery of his birthplace and its neighbourhood is curiously worked in; but for the most part the satire is typical rather than individual, and it is on the whole a rather negative satire. In only two points can Rabelais be said to be definitely polemic. He certainly hated the monkish See also:system in the debased form in which it existed in his time; he as certainly hated the brutish See also:ignorance into which the earlier systems of education had suffered too many of their teachers and scholars to drop. At these two things he was never tired of striking, but elsewhere, even in the grim satire of the Chats fourres, he is the satirist proper rather than the reformer. It is in the very absence of any cramping or limiting purpose that the great merit and value of the book consist. It holds up an almost perfectly level and spotless See also:mirror to the See also:temper of the earlier Renaissance. The author has no universal medicine of his own (except Pantagruelism) to offer, nor has he anybody else's universal medicine to attack. He ranges freely about the world, touching the laughable sides of things with kindly laughter, and every now and then dropping the risibile and taking to the rationale. It is not indeed possible to deny that in the Oracle of the Bottle, besides its merely jocular and fantastic sense, there is a certain ' See also:echo," as it has been called, " of the conclusion of the preacher," a certain See also:acknowledgment of the vanity of things. But in such a book such a See also:note could hardly be wanting unless the writer had been a fanatic, which he was not, or a See also:mere voluptuary, which he was not, or a dullard, which he was least of all. It is, after all, little more than a See also:suggestion, and is certainly not strengthened by anything in the See also:body of the work. Rabelais is, in short, if he be read without See also:prejudice, a humorist pure and See also:simple, feeling often in earnest, thinking almost always in jest. He is distinguished from the two men who alone can be compared with him in character of work and force of See also:genius combined—Lucian and See also:Swift—by very marked characteristics. He is much less of a mere mocker than Lucian, and he is entirely destitute, even when he deals with monks or pedants, of the ferocity of Swift. He neither sneers nor rages; the rire immense which distinguishes him is altogether good-natured ; but he is nearer to Lucian than to Swift, and Lucian is perhaps the author whom it is most necessary to know in order to under-stand him rightly. If this general view is correct it will probably See also:condition to some extent the answer to be given to the two See also:minor questions stated above. The first is connected with the great blemish of Gargantua and Pantagruel—t See also:heir extreme coarseness of language and imagery. It is somewhat curious that some of those who claim Rabelais as an enemy of the supernatural in general have been the loudest to condemn this blemish, and that some of them have made the exceedingly lame excuse for him that it was a means of wrapping up his propaganda and keeping it and himself safe from the notice of the See also:powers that were. This is not complimentary to Rabelais, and, except in some very small degree, it is not likely to be true. For as a matter of fact See also:obscenity no less than impiety was charged against him by his ultra-orthodox enemies, and the obscenity no less than the supposed impiety gave them a handle against him before such bodies as the Sorbonne and the parliaments. As for the extreme theory of the anti-Rabelaisians, that Rabelais was a " dirty old blackguard " who liked filth and wallowed in it from choice, that hardly needs comment. His errors in this way are of course, looked at from an See also:absolute See also:standard, unpardonable. But judged relatively there are several, we shall not say excuses, but explanations of them. In the first place, the See also:comparative in-decency of Rabelais has been much exaggerated by persons unfamiliar with early French literature. The form of his book was above all things popular, and the popular French literature of the middle ages as distinguished from the courtly and literary literature, which was singularly pure, can hardly be exceeded in point of coarseness. The fabliaux, the early burlesque romances of the Audigier class, the farces of the 15th century, equal (the See also:grotesque iteration and amplification which is the note of Gargantua and Pantagruel being allowed for, and sometimes without that See also:allowance) the coarsest passages of Rabelais. His coarseness, moreover, disgusting as it is, has nothing of the corruption of refined voluptuousness about it, and nothing of the sniggering indecency which disgraces men like Pope, like See also:Voltaire, and like See also:Sterne. It shows in its author a want of reverence, a want of decency in the proper sense, a too great readiness to condescend to the easiest kind of ludicrous ideas and the kind most acceptable at that time to the common run of mankind. The general See also:taste having been considerably refined since, Rabelais has in parts become nearly unreadable—the worst and most appropriate See also:punishment for his faults. As for those who have tried to make his indecency an argument for his laxity in religious principle, that argument, like another mentioned previously, hardly needs discussion. It is notoriously false as a matter of experience. Rabelais could not have written as he has written in this respect and in others if he had been an earnestly pious See also:person, taking heed to every act and word, and studious equally not to offend and not to cause offence. But no one in his senses would See also:dream of claiming any such character for him.
This brings us to the last point—what his religious opinions were. He has been claimed as a free-thinker of all shades, from undogmatic See also:theism to See also:atheism, and as a concealed See also:Protestant. The last of these claims has now been very generally given up, and indeed See also:Erasmus might quite as reasonably be claimed for the See also:Reformation as Rabelais. Both disliked and attacked the more crying abuses of their See also: The sayings attributed to Rabelais which See also:colour the See also:idea (such as the famous " Je vais chercher un grand peut-etre," said to have been uttered on his death-See also:bed) are, as has been said, purely apocryphal. In the book itself nothing of the kind is to be found. Perhaps the nearest approach to it is a jest at the Sorbonne couched in the Pauline phrase about " the evidence of things not seen," which the author removed from the later editions. But irreverences of this kind, as well as the frequent burlesque citations of the See also:Bible, whether commendable or not, had been, were, have since been, and are common in writers whose orthodoxy is unquestioned; and it must be remembered that the later Middle Age, which in many respects Rabelais represents almost more than he does the Renaissance, was, with all its unquestioning faith, singularly reckless and, to our See also:fancy, irreverent in its use of the sacred words and images, which were to it the most See also:familiar of all images and words. On the other hand, there are in the book, in the description of Gargantua's and Pantagruel's education, in the sketch of the abbey of Thelema, in several passages See also:relating to Pantagruel, expressions which either signify a sincere and unfeigned piety of a simple kind or else are inventions of the most detestable See also:hypocrisy. For these passages are not, like many to be found from the Renaissance to the end of the 18th century, obvious flags of truce to See also:cover attacks—mere bowings in the house of Rimmon to prevent evil consequences. There is absolutely no sign of the See also:tongue in the cheek. They are always written in the author's highest See also:style, a style perfectly eloquent and unaffected; they can only be interpreted (on the free-thinking hypothesis) as allegorical with the greatest difficulty and obscurity, and it is See also:pretty certain that no one reading the book without a thesis to prove would dream of taking them in a non-natural sense. It is not, indeed, to be contended that Rabelais was a man with whom religion was in detail a See also:constant thought, that he had a very See also:tender See also:conscience or a very scrupulous orthodoxy. His form of religious sentiment was not evangelical or mystical, any more than it was ascetic or ceremonial or dogmatic. As regards one of the accepted doctrines of his own church, the excellence of the celibate life, of poverty, and of elaborate obedience to a See also:rule, he no doubt was a strong dissident; but the evidence that, as a Christian, he was unorthodox, that he was even a heretical or latitudinarian thinker in regard to those doctrines which the various Christian churches have in common, is not merely weak, it is practically non-existent. The See also:counter-testimony is, indeed, not very strong, and still less detailed. But that is not the point. It is sufficient to say that there is absolutely nothing within the covers of Rabelais's See also:works incompatible with an orthodoxy which would be recognized as sufficient by Christendom at large, leaving out of the question those points of See also:doctrine and practice on which Christians differ. Beyond this no See also:wise man will go, and short of it hardly any unprejudiced man will stop.
Rabelais was very early popular in England. There are possibleallusions to him in See also:Shakespeare, and the current clerical notion of him is very unjustly adopted by See also:Marston in the words " wicked Rabelais "; but See also: Somewhat elaborate treatments of him in connexion with contemporary literature will be found in See also:George See also:Saintsbury's The Earlier Renaissance (1901) and in A. See also:Tilley's Literature of the French Renaissance (1904). (G. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
» Add information or comments to this article.
Please link directly to this article:
Highlight the code below, right click, and select "copy." Then paste it into your website, email, or other HTML. Site content, images, and layout Copyright © 2006 - Net Industries, worldwide. |
|
|
[back] RABBULA |
[next] RABENER, GOTTLIEB WILHELM (1714–1771) |