Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:22:06.185Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“L'Isle Medamothi”: Rabelais's Itineraries of Anxiety (Quart livre 2-4)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Alice Fiola Berry
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the Medamothi episode of Rabelais's 1552 Quart livre, the medieval tradition of storytelling represented by Gargantua encounters the classical tradition. This meditation on origins is enacted as a family drama: the son, Pantagruel, attempts to choose between his two “fathers.” Initially, the classical influences have priority. Pantagruel buys tapestries of the life of Achilles, an act representing the son's desire to break from his past with Gargantua by adopting the Greek hero's life. Pantagruel also purchases strange animals that describe the creation of a new and living logos. In the next chapter, Gargantua's envoy arrives to vindicate the native father's rights. Gifts and letters are traded between Gargantua and Pantagruel, an exchange charged with antagonism. The rivalry is resolved, however, for Pantagruel sends back home the classical things he purchased on Medamothi. Two literary pasts nurture Rabelais's books, but, in the end, the author privileges the native tradition.

Type
Cluster on Reader-Response Criticism
Information
PMLA , Volume 106 , Issue 5 , October 1991 , pp. 1040 - 1053
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Barkan, Leonard The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Barkan, Leonard. Transuming Passion: Ganymede and the Erotics of Humanism. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Berry, Alice F “‘Les Mithologies Pantagruelicques’: Introduction to a Study of Rabelais's Quart livre.” PMLA 92 (1977): 471–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, Alice F. “The Mix, the Mask, and the Medical Farce: A Study of the Prologues to Rabelais's Quart livre.” Romanic Review 71 (1980): 10–27.Google Scholar
Blanchot, Maurice L'espace littéraire. Paris: Gallimard, 1955.Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. London: Oxford UP, 1973.Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold. A Map of Misreading. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Cave, Terence The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance. London: Oxford UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. M., trans The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel. By François Rabelais. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1975.Google Scholar
Cotgrave, Randle A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. London, 1611. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1950. N. pag.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques “La pharmacie de Platon.” La dissemination. Paris: Seuil, 1972. 69–197.Google Scholar
Du Bellay, Joachim La deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse. Ed. Chamard, Henri. Paris: Didier, 1970.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Margaret W “The Exile's Defense: Du Bellay's La deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse.” PMLA 93 (1978): 275–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fletcher, Angus Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1964.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund “Family Romances.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. and trans. Strachey, James. Vol. 9. London: Hogarth, 1959. 237-41. 24 vols. 1953–19.Google Scholar
Godfrey, Sima “Editor's Preface: The Anxiety of Anticipation.” The Anxiety of Anticipation. Ed. Godfrey. Yale French Studies 66. New Haven: Yale UP, 1984. iii-ix.Google Scholar
Greene, Thomas M The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Hampton, Timothy “Montaigne and the Body of Socrates: Narrative and Exemplarity in the Essais.” MLN 104 (1989): 880–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollander, John The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After. Berkeley: U of California P, 1981.Google Scholar
Jourda, Pierre, ed Œuvres complètes. By François Rabelais. Paris: Garnier, 1962. 2 vols.Google Scholar
Montaigne, Michel de Œuvres complètes. Ed. Thibaudet, Albert and Rat, Maurice. Paris: Pléiade-Gallimard, 1962.Google Scholar
Plato. Phaedrus. Trans. R. Hackforth. The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including the Letters. Ed. Hamilton, Edith and Cairns, Huntington. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1963. 475–525.Google Scholar
Plattard, Jean, ed Le quart livre de Pantagruel (édition dite partielle, Lyons, 1548). By François Rabelais. Paris: Champion, 1909.Google Scholar
Pliny. Natural History. Trans. Rackham, H. Vol. 3. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1940.Google Scholar
Quint, David Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source. New Haven: Yale UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Rimbaud, Arthur “Lettre à Paul Demeny.” Œuvres. Ed. Bernard, S. and Guyaux, A. Paris: Garnier, 1981. 346–34.Google Scholar
Smith, Paul J Voyage et écriture: Etude sur le Quart livre de Rabelais. Geneva: Droz, 1987. Vol. 19 of Etudes rabelaisiennes.Google Scholar
Starobinski, Jean “Stendhal pseudonyme.” L'œil vivant. Paris: Gallimard, 1961. 191–244.Google Scholar
Tetel, Marcel “Carnival and Beyond.” L'Esprit Créateur 21.1 (1981): 88–104.Google Scholar
Wittkower, R “Imitation, Eclecticism, and Genius.” Aspects of the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Wasserman, Earl R. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1965. 143–14.Google Scholar