1 Œuvres complètes de Rabelais, ed. Plattard, Jean (Les Textes Francais, II, Paris, 1946), 168–169 Google Scholar.

2 For Rabelais’ debt to Lucian, see Plattard, Jean, L'œuure de Rabelais (Paris, 1910), pp. 206–211 Google Scholar. The most important references to the True History occur in Pantagruel, Chapter 32, and in Le cinquiesme livre, Chapter 33, but these concern terrestrial rather than celestial adventures in Lucian's work. References to Lucian's cosmic voyage, the Icaromenippus, appear in Pantagruel, Chapters 1 and 14, and in Le quart livre, Prologue.

3 For the many editions of the Satyre Ménippée and its various supplements issued since 1593, see Brunet, Jacques, Manuel du libraire et de l'amateur de livres (5th ed., Paris, 1860-65), cols. 143–146 Google Scholar, and Supplément, ed. P. Deschamps and G. Brunet (Paris, 1878-80), II, cols. 593-595. In the absence of positive evidence to the contrary, I prefer to follow Brunet and all other scholars whom I know in assigning the date of original publication of the Nouvelles to 1595. Internal evidence further reinforces the conclusion that the work could not have been written before 1595. See infra, n. 7.

The earliest edition of the Nouvelles which I have been able to examine was published in 1599. n.p. (Library of Congress PQ 1704 AI). For the 1595 text, I have therefore had to rely on reprints. In an effort to determine the most satisfactory text for the citations in my paper, I have compared the following readily available editions of the Satyre Minippie, each of which includes the Nouvelles and other ‘pièces supplémentaires': ed. Charles Nodier (Paris: Dalibon, 1824), 2 vol. in-8°; ed. Charles Labitte (Paris: Charpentier, 1841), in-120; and ed. Edouard Tricotel (Paris: Lemerre, 1877-81), 2 vol. in-16°. That there are many inconsistencies and errors in orthography, punctuation, and accent marks in the text of the Nouvelles in these editions is largely attributable to the fact that all the early printings of the Satyre Ménippée and its supplements were made with very little care for typographical accuracy. Variations in wording and phraseology in these reprints of the Nouvelles are, on the other hand, infrequent and, in my judgment, do not seriously affect its content and meaning.

In light of these findings, I have decided that all citations of the Nouvelles in my text should be to the Tricotel edition, II (Paris, 1881), 1-97, which purports to give the original 1595 text, and which I consider more careful and scholarly than the editions of Nodier and, particularly, Labitte.

4 For an interesting account of the history of the genre before the seventeenth century, when the influence of the ‘new philosophy’ brought about important changes in form and content, see Nicolson, Marjorie, Voyages to the Moon (New York, 1948), pp. 10–22 Google Scholar.

5 I have found no indication in their cosmic voyages that either Sorel or Cyrano was familiar with the Nouvelles. Nor have I discovered any evidence that it was known to the Englishman Francis Godwin, whose Man in the Moone (1638), published at Paris in 1648 as L'homme dans la lune in Jean Baudoin's translation, had some influence on Cyrano. A work as ignorant of the ‘new science’ as the Nouvelles would hardly have appealed, in any case, to such ‘moderns’ as Sorel, Godwin, and Cyrano.

6 In her history of lunar voyages, Marjorie Nicolson devotes a paragraph to the Nouvelles, dismissing it for its failure to consider seriously means by which man may reach the moon and for the lack of verisimilitude in the moon-world that it depicts (op. cit., pp. 19-20). Lazare Sainéan mentions it briefly as a mediocre imitation of the Satyre Ménippée, and remarks without amplification that ‘la préface est remplie d'allusions à Rabelais, et à son roman’ (L'influence et la réputation de Rabelais, Paris, 1930, p. 157)Google Scholar. GeofFroy Atkinson notes only that the framework of a lunar voyage is used in the Nouvelles as a means of satirizing the Jesuits and other Catholic missionaries (Les nouveaux horizons de la Renaissance française, Paris, 1935, p. 308). And in his monumental work on French satiric literature in the sixteenth century, Charles Lenient calls the Nouvelles ‘ une oeuvre presque illisible', contrasts its obscure fantasy with the reality of the Satyre Ménippée, and concludes that the preface is the only part of the work which still retains any interest (La satire en France ou la littérature militante au XVI^e siècle, Paris, 1886, II, 148). Such reactions on the part of some of the best-known scholars in the fields of the cosmic voyage, the influence of Rabelais, the French Renaissance, and French satire seem, quite naturally, to have had the effect of discouraging a serious study of the Nouvelles.

7 This allusion to the attempted assassination of Henri IV by Jean Châtel, a student at the Jesuit Collège de Clermont, which occurred on December 27, 1594, would appear to fix the composition of the Nouvelles at some time in 1595, and to eliminate conjectures that it was written as early as 1593.

8 Miss Nicolson remarks that ‘the original suggestion of lunar colonization was not British but German’ (op. cit., p. 29), and then quotes John Wilkins, in his Discovery of a New World in the Moon (1638), to the effect that this had first been the idea of Kepler. It would seem, however, that the Frenchman who wrote the Nouvelles should be given precedence over the German astronomer for this amusing imperialistic notion. He appears also to have anticipated John Donne's proposal, in his Ignatius his Conclave (1611), that the Jesuits be transported to the moon, although he does not go so far as Donne, who recommended that the whole society be sent there, to create not only a new empire but a new hell.

9 It is apparently only a curious lapsus that whereas in his dedication to the King of Spain the author had his Jesuit refer to but a seven-month stay on the moon by the four voyagers, he now has the narrator say that the trip lasted seven years. The narrative confirms the latter period of time since, as will later be seen, the Frenchmen witness from the moon the destruction of the Spanish Armada, which took place in 1588, and do not return to France until Christmas Eve in 1594.

10 This being so, I prefer to consider the presence of these familiar figures in both Rabelais and the Nouvelles as coincidence rather than a definite reflection of the earlier work in the later. The uncomplimentary sobriquet ‘maistre Aliboron’ is bestowed by Panurge upon the mute Nazdecabre who answers all his questions only with signs (Le tiers livre, Chapter 20), and there are allusions to the ‘franc archer de Bagnolet’ in Pantagruel, Chapter 7, and in Le quart livre, Chapter 55.

11 References to the ‘trou de saint Patrice’ occur in Gargantua, Chapter 2, and in Le cinquiesme livre, Chapter 36. As in the case of the personages of Aliboron and the ‘franc archor. de Bagnolet', however, this is probably more a coincidental use of familiar folklore material than a reflection of Rabelais’ work in the Nouvelles.

12 This outlet from the lower world to the upper is reminiscent of that found in Lucian's dialogue Menippus, where the reader is told of a deep aperture in the earth at the shrine of Trophonius in Lebadea, through which Menippus, with considerable difficulty, crawls up from Hades to the surface. The ‘rapprochement’ between the hole at Trophonius and Saint Patrick's Purgatory was a natural one, which had already been made by Erasmus (Adages, 1, 7 and 57), and which may also be found in Le cinquiesme livre of Rabelais’ work (Chapter 36).

13 Op. cit., p. 20.

14 In fairness to Kepler, it should be noted that he was not merely trying to avoid difficulties in using such a fantastic device for flight to the moon. In his text and notes, he considered more fully than any writer before him the possible effects of gravity and rarefied air upon the human organism traveling through space. See Nicolson, Marjorie, op. cit., p. 45 Google Scholar, and ‘Kepler, the Somnium, and Donne, John’, in Science and Imagination (Ithaca, 1956), pp. 59–60, 74-75Google Scholar.

15 For the close similarity in ideas and even wording, the passage in Lucian should be recalled: ‘The prayers came from all parts of the world and were of all sorts and kinds, for I myself bent over the orifice and listened to them along with him. They went like this; “O Zeus, may I succeed in becoming king!” “O Zeus, make my onions and my garlic grow!‘ “O ye gods, let my father die quickly!“; and now and then one or another would say: “O that I may inherit my wife's property!” … “May I succeed in winning my suit!” “Let me win the wreath at the Olympic games!” Among seafaring men, one was praying for the north wind to blow, another for the south wind; and the farmers were praying for rain while the washermen were praying for sunshine.’ Icaromenippus, in Lucian, tr. A. M. Harmon, II (London: Loeb Classical Library, 1953), 311.

16 For Lucian all the world was indeed a stage, and he a spectator surveying the actions of the performers with complete detachment and indifference. See, e.g., Icaromenippus, ed. cit., pp. 298-299.

17 I.e., the fanatic Jacobin monk Jacques Clément.

18 Lucian made precisely the same suggestion to any reader who doubted the veracity of his assertion that from the moon he could observe at close range everything that occurred in his native land. See the True History, in The Works of Lucian of Samosata, tr. H. W. and F. G. Fowler, II (Oxford, 1905), 146.

19 There is no evidence of which I am aware as to the identity of the author of the Nouvelles, or even as to whether he was one of the six known collaborators in the composition of the Satyre Ménippée, Florent Chrestien, Jacques Gillot, Jean Leroy, Jean Passerat, Pierre Pithou, and Nicolas Rapin. Nor do I believe that the work itself gives more than the vaguest indications of what kind of man he was: a patriot, probably a bourgeois, a man of some humanistic training but lacking in real literary talent, possessed of a blunt, occasionally crude satiric sense, etc. Considering the obscurity which still surrounds the writing of the Satyre Ménippée and the precise contribution of each of its collaborators, it seems unlikely or chanceful that the identity of the authors of its anonymous supplements will ever be known with certainty.