Rabelais
Gargantua & Pantagruel
Sui Generis
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Rabelais’ books look like installments of a novel,
but really defies classification [like nothing else].
Critical interpretations [two opposite views]
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expression of a comic genius concerned purely with
entertainment for its own sake
deeply-felt philosophical and religious messages
Rabelais was in constant danger from powerful
opponents who explicitly condemned his works
for the religious and political ideas which they
expressed.
Literacy
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By 1532 literacy was no longer just for the
aristocratic and the highly educated.
Main market was the rising merchant class
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Popular fiction was mostly made up of sensationalized
prose versions of medieval epics and romances, replete
with knights, damsels in distress, giants, magic, and
sex.
Prospective buyers would have seen a story about
giants, ensuring sales, but they got much more!
So popular were these genres that they were
already being parodied [as does Rabelais &
Cervantes]
Satire & Parody
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Satire is a verbal or visual mode of expression
that uses ridicule to diminish its subject in the
eyes of its audience.
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The authors are intent on making fun of the absurdity,
pretension and degeneracy of the respective worlds they
are portraying [usually the society they are currently
living in].
Parody is a form of satire that imitates another
work of art [like a sonnet or romance novel] in
order to ridicule it.
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When the conventions of a genre have become defined,
authors often lampoon these conventions, making the
reader laugh.
Humanism
philosophical and literary movement that
centers on humans and their values,
capacities, and worth
 emphasis on classical studies and a
conscious return to classical ideals and
forms as a result of the rediscovery and
study of the literature, art, and civilization
of ancient Greece and Rome.
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formal education very highly valued
often a search for a utopian society where
all are treated well and with dignity