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From Satura to Satyre: François Rabelais and the Renaissance Appropriation of a Genre*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Bernd Renner
Bernd Renner*
Affiliation:
CUNY, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center
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Abstract

Renaissance satire has long been a neglected field of study, which is most likely due to the difficulty decoding its targets, to its nonliterary utilitarian purpose, and to the menace of invective that always hovers over the satirical metagenre. This study aims at two objectives: to retrace the formal development of early modern satire by showing how the blending of four disparate traditions — Roman satura, Greek satyr play, Menippean satire, and medieval popular theater — created a form that not only dominated the period, but also laid the groundwork for the development of the modern variants of satire. This pivotal moment in the history of satire then gives way to the second objective: a concrete illustration of this theoretical development in the four authentic Pantagrueline chronicles of François Rabelais, an ideal case study that will considerably enhance the understanding of early modern satire in all its implications and intricacies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , Summer 2014 , pp. 377 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2014

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Footnotes

*

Research for this article was supported by a PSC-CUNY summer grant and a Brooklyn College Tow Travel Grant. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Harvard and Columbia Renaissance seminars and I am grateful for the helpful comments made in the ensuing discussions. Finally, I want to thank the evaluators of Renaissance Quarterly for their suggestions. Unless noted otherwise, translations are mine.

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