Rabelais and His World

[This is a review of three interrelated books:

, and Baktin’s study,

. Same review posted in all three places.]

Ishmael, on first beholding Queequeg.

Bakhtin



Millions of words have been written about these books, so this will b......more

[This is a review of three interrelated books:

, and Baktin’s study,

. Same review posted in all three places.]

Ishmael, on first beholding Queequeg.

Bakhtin



Millions of words have been written about these books, so this will be a review limited to a serendipitous reading.

My reading plan for 2015 includes both

(read decades ago) and

. I started MD (immediately bowled over by Melville) and a few days later G&P. As noted in my updates, suddenly I found myself reading, on the same day, a chapter in MD on the color white (ghostly, forboding, fear-inducing), and a chapter in G&P on the colors white and blue (white: joy, solace, and gladness). What had happened between 1530 and 1852? Had Melville read Rabelais?

It turns out that not only had Melville read Rabelais, but he had read him only a year or two previously in a great binge of classics, and his novel

immediately preceding MD was criticized as too dependent on Rabelais. So I read on, looking for influences and adding the Russian Mikhail Bakhtin’s

to my co-reading adventure. Bakhtin comments extensively on how the Romantics lost the joyful, regenerative aspect of the grotesque that abounds in Rabelais, a concept that strongly colored the way I read the rest of the novels. I have read additional bits of biography and other criticism as I went along, but mostly this review is an unmediated reaction to these three books.

While Bakhtin doesn’t mention Melville, MD might be a case study in the turn from the original Carnival to the negation of the elements of Carnival that are critical to the Renaissance buoyancy and positive life in Rabelais. On land, Ishmael and Queequeg revel in oyster stew and their physicality; they proceed by happenstance and whim. On the Pequod life is ruled by bells and rank, and absolute hierarchy reigns: Starbuck is repeatedly rebuked for respectfully, even piously, suggesting the monomaniacal chase is ill-chosen. This is the complete reverse of the Feast of Fools atmosphere of Carnival, where the lowly can say anything to the powerful, and a commoner is elected King or Pope for a day.

A selection of observations (note: many spoilers below):

First of all, of course, one confronts the revolving omnibus approach to the novel. These two gargantuan works encompass everything: satire, broad humor, slapstick, tragedy, scientific treatises, battles, quests, erudition, philosophical reflections, psychology, political and religious satire and commentary, exploration, the ocean, the bonds formed by men fighting the elements and the enemy, food, and so much more. Melville clearly learned the power of this, and must have studied Rabelais’s method carefully. And yet his novel is more tightly linear in plot, by design as well as due to his writing it as one coherent work, while Rabelais published G&P over twenty years (1532-1552).

Then there is the observant narrator. In MD he dominates the first sentence: ‘Call me Ishmael." In G&P, in contrast, I think I was a quarter of the way through before the ‘I’ first appeared. ‘I’? Who is this? The reader never finds out, and only encounters ‘I’ a few more times. How is ‘I’ that different from Ishmael, who after selecting the Pequod, never enters the action again? An issue that would take much thought.

The grandiose ruler who destroys his kingdom: Ahab and Picrochole.

Discourses on rope: the harpoon line and hemp.

Science. Melville was writing in the midst of a scientific world; philology and geology had led to questions about the Bible, and evolution was I think fairly commonly discussed, even if Darwin’s theory of natural selection was a few years in the future. Unknown lands were being explored. (Although Ishmael still insists the whale is a fish.) The industrial revolution meant the mechanics of everything were of interest, and the mechanics of whaling populate every page. Similarly, Rabelais’s medicine permeates G&P, with equal importance: the body is ever-present. He has a long explanation of the circulation of the blood. In battles, no one is ever just run through with a lance: the path through every organ and tendon is detailed. The guts and genitals of the Carnival are evolving into a Renaissance awareness of anatomy and science.

The practical joke. Panurge’s and Villon’s violent practical jokes that have serious physical consequences for their victims, contrasted with Stubb’s practical joke on the French captain (‘rescuing’ him from the noxious fumes of the whale filled with ambergris), with its serious financial consequences. Attention has turned from the body to profit.

The repeated advice from outsiders to cease and desist. In G&P, much of Book Three is devoted to soliciting both friendly and ‘professional’ (fortune-tellers and seers) advice for Panurge: should he marry? No, they all agree he will be a cuckold in short order, beaten and robbed. Similarly, Ahab is advised by Starbuck, the English Captain and the other Nantucket captain who has lost his son to give up this irrational and doomed chase. But neither Ahab nor Panurge can be reached—they are consumed by their passions. But then, neither do Ishmael and Queequeg heed Elijah when he warns them about Ahab. So their last land-based encounter with Elijah could be looked at as a turning point between whim and unswerving mission. In any case, both Panurge and Ahab end up pursuing their passionate quest in a ship, and barely survivin a tremendous storm.

One of the most complex comparisons between the two novels involves Panurge and Pip. This is because Pip is so dependent on the intervening Shakespeare’s fools, but I think the link to the terrified Panurge (as the storm at sea rages) is still there in Pip.

Religion: Rabelais was a monk, although perhaps a reluctant one. He also trained as a physician, and, unusual for his time, knew Greek. Bakhtin backs the critic Lucien Febvre’s stance that Rabelais could not have been a rationalist atheist, as claimed by Abel Lefranc, because his culture did not enable him to have such a thought. Hard to say. G&P certainly overflows with rapacious and salacious priests, harsh satire on sellers of indulgences and well-fed monks, etc. Rival orders parade through one story after another. And yet, one doesn’t feel totally engaged in real theological issues. Very different from MD, where not only the differences between Quaker and Congregationalist, but between south seas wooden idols and Fedallah’s Zorastrianism matter. [However, my copy of G&P had very few footnotes, so I may have missed 90% of Rabelais’s comments on religion. That inability to understand much of Rabelais without help because of so many intervening centuries was frustrating. I have ordered Screech’s translation of G&P, which apparently has much more complete notes.]

One of the most interesting religious questions is about vengeance. Ahab goes to his death defying the Biblical ‘Vengeance is mine’ saith the Lord. There is plenty of vengeance in the Carnival life of G&P, including the utterly unjustified shaming of the Lady of Paris by Panurge, and the physical destruction of the monk who will not loan clerical garb to Villon for a Carnival play. This is contrasted by the complete forgiveness exhibited by Gargantua in the non-Carnival ‘plot’ to those who have attacked his country, caused war with its accompanying destruction and death. He is magnanimous in victory.

One has to read Melville on ‘vengeance is mine’ in its time: against the looming Civil War. As I noted in my progress notes, he also wrote on property rights (Fast Whales and Loose Whales) shortly after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.

There is so much more to say. These are books I will think about and come back to, I know.

A word on editions: I listened to Anthony Heald read

; he was fabulous. The scientific sections were full of expression, let alone the ‘story’ chapters. Hard copy: I have not yet explored the material, but I think the critical apparatus in the Norton edition of Moby Dick will be very useful, even if the Rockwell Kent illustrations in the Modern Library edition are lovely. Rabelais: as mentioned above, I felt as though I was missing a lot in the Penguin edition of G&P (Cohen translation) so have ordered the Screech translation, which is supposed to have more help. And to be a good, alternative translation. And on Bakhtin: yes, he is repetitive, but worth it; much to think about there.(less)

Dostoevsky and Rabelais may strike you as a pears and pepper combination but for literary critic and collective farm bookkeeper Mikhail Bakhtin the two went as naturally together as rice and peas or bread and cheese.

In both of them he found the spirit of the medieval carnival, boy bishop......more

Dostoevsky and Rabelais may strike you as a pears and pepper combination but for literary critic and collective farm bookkeeper Mikhail Bakhtin the two went as naturally together as rice and peas or bread and cheese.

In both of them he found the spirit of the medieval carnival, boy bishops and the Lord of Misrule. Here was the world turned upside down and a blast of equal voices in concert. It was all at least ten years too late and in the context of Stalin's Russia Bakhtin was wise enough to appreciate that his literary opinions were running counter to the times he found himself in and so he took himself off to Kazhakstan and reinvented himself as a bookkeeper. An act which was in keeping with his literary insights.



I remember this as a fresh and an exciting read. What can I say - I was young once and a student, it takes further some ideas present in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics and extends them to Rabelais and then to Roman novels with carnival elements.(less)

I love to use Bakhtin's ideas in my teaching. I'm particularly partial to his early thought, but this book is great for helping student see the importance of humor.

Bakhtin discusses mideval humor and how it was deeply political. In fact, he finds it deeply revolutionary.

You c......more

I love to use Bakhtin's ideas in my teaching. I'm particularly partial to his early thought, but this book is great for helping student see the importance of humor.

Bakhtin discusses mideval humor and how it was deeply political. In fact, he finds it deeply revolutionary.

You can't oppress someone who is laughing at you.

What joy!(less)

"Laughter must liberate the gay truth of the world from the veils of gloomy lies spun by religion, politics and economics."

===================

Some fascinating connections between Don Quixote (which I just reread) and the humor of Rabelais (d. 1553) and his world that influenc......more

"Laughter must liberate the gay truth of the world from the veils of gloomy lies spun by religion, politics and economics."

===================

Some fascinating connections between Don Quixote (which I just reread) and the humor of Rabelais (d. 1553) and his world that influenced Cervantes (d. 1616). First, a mocking of institutions that were held in solemn regard, whether it was the Church for Rabelais or the ludicrous chivalry represented by the knight errancy of Don Q. Second, the bodily humor of Gargantua and Pantagruel and the earthiness of many of the dialogues between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, contra the fussy spiritualism of the ascetics.

"Sancho's fat belly (in Spanish, panza), his appetite and thirst convey a carnivalesque spirit."

A very poignant example comes in Part 2, Book 1, Chapter 20, of Don Quixote, where Don Q and Sancho come upon a rich wedding feast. Don Q is still obsessed with finding his love. Dulcinea of Toboso, but Sancho is immediately drawn to the food and gorges on doves, hares, chickens, suckling pigs, and "various kinds of fowl hanging from the trees." And drinks a seemingly endless supply of wine. Sancho sees this feast as a kind of reward for all that he has been through with his Master and also because he has not yet been awarded his insular.

And, of course, the entire story of Quixote is one big carnival of windmills (giants), inns (castles), flocks of rams and sheep (armies of knights), innkeepers (lords of the castle), prostitutes (noble ladies) and so forth.

Like Cervantes, Shakespeare (d. 1616, same year as Cervantes) was significantly influenced by the writings of Rabelais, as shown most clearly in the character of Falstaff (Henry IV)....

"A man at once young and old, enterprising and fat, a dupe and a wit, harmless and wicked, weak in principle and resolute by constitution, cowardly in appearance and brave in reality, a knave without malice, a liar without deceit, and a knight, a gentleman, and a soldier without either dignity, decency, or honor."

======

And a modern Rabelaisian word, "poopefaction," discovered by Glenn Russell for his review of Witkiewicz's "Insatiability." Everyone is under the influence of a drug called Murti Bing, that makes them passive and obedient to their rulers.

A quote from the novel...

"people had become so stupefied through automation [tech] that in time they ceased to know why they did anything and began to blend into a homogenous and stuporous state of poopefaction."

This is now Internet addiction, the poopefaction factor that keeps people hooked on social media.

--------(less)

In our present new Dark Age, I recommend this book highly. Bakhtin’s hilarious tome contains currents of resistance, subversion, and the return of grotesque humor (i.e. Rabelasian) of carnival fused with mockery of religion & the so-called ‘ruling class.’ Bakhtin’s compelling argument is that the ye......more

In our present new Dark Age, I recommend this book highly. Bakhtin’s hilarious tome contains currents of resistance, subversion, and the return of grotesque humor (i.e. Rabelasian) of carnival fused with mockery of religion & the so-called ‘ruling class.’ Bakhtin’s compelling argument is that the yeasty Dark Ages were funnier than Renaissance comedy for not excluding lower body functions, noises, stenches, and broad vulgarity in that era’s art, satire, & festival. Heartier, truer laughter ensued from Rabelais than did from Cervantes later, according to our author. When Aristos adapted peasant carnivals into court masques, they not only excluded the lower bodily functions but the organs thereof. Bakhtin’s peasants with their earthy belly laughs were thematically echoed in 20th century developments such as Bataille’s secret society of Acephale- headless Dionysos with labyrinthine guts, and the ‘body without organs’ of Deleuze and Guattari. The detached, refined work of the alleged Renaissance devolved from vital carnival rebellion and satirical mockery. Evidence is presented in analysis of the qualities of laughter, concluding that the full bodied laughter of the Dark Ages was more complete than effete Renaissance laughter. Hidden within this peculiar book are many suggestions for social, personal, and theatrical resistance. Clearly a new carnival culture is rising up in response to our abrupt Dark Age, and it’s time for mischievous freaks to plumb this pudding of a book for inspiration. Bakhtin had much to lose, as the book’s foreword explains. I have traveled to many places with this book in my backpack. I have read passages on community radio KNON. It’s a special book. Pass it along to the person in the next cell or bureaucratic work-farm cubical.(less)

I had a pet boa constrictor years ago, and I popped him in a bag along with this book for a cross-country drive, during which time he shat all over the book. I think that's kickass appropriate, but perhaps no more appropriate than had it been kristeva, bataille, or deleuze.

I had a pet boa constrictor years ago, and I popped him in a bag along with this book for a cross-country drive, during which time he shat all over the book. I think that's kickass appropriate, but perhaps no more appropriate than had it been kristeva, bataille, or deleuze.(less)

Wow! At one time trash talking and irony wasn't just to cut the other guy down to size. It was meant to revitalize, revivify and renew. Feasting, loosing of bowels, a bit of the old in and out, beating someone until they are bloodied, crushed and readied for eating as mince meat and general debaucer......more

Wow! At one time trash talking and irony wasn't just to cut the other guy down to size. It was meant to revitalize, revivify and renew. Feasting, loosing of bowels, a bit of the old in and out, beating someone until they are bloodied, crushed and readied for eating as mince meat and general debaucery at the wine keg are all activities of rebirth and regeneration and all around good fun in the middle ages...and sometimes,if you hang about the applicable crowd, one can find such activities existant in our more "enlightened" age. And usually real death does ensue.

I love Bakhtin. I think I really love his critique of Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel far more than I liked the actual fantastic novel by the French novelist. I tried reading it a couple of years ago and didn't get all the references and milieu of the writers time. Perhaps, I will try the novel again and not be so perplexed. I just have to remember important facts. The novel has a lot of screwing, barfing, child birth, cudgeling, affectionate ribbing, playful killing and drowning of whole villages with copious amounts of urine. Why? Because Rabellais was trying to attack the serious culture of medieval Europe with its oppressive hierarchies of the church and kings and feudal lords. And the only time and way to do this eviscerating of such banal seriousness was during the period of carnival and, in the arts, with carnival images. Otherwise, attacking seriousness with seriousness may lead to a hot fire around a human sized stake in the village square and lead you to howling, quite seriously, as your flesh melts from your bones, forming a tasty bubbling broth for the rats to swill at the conclusion of your very own inferno.

For writers, just soak up the imagery. Let it percolate in your own bowels and watch it ooze onto the page at the most opportune, but albeit unintended moment. Or use it with the full intention of stealing the ideas and imagery and interpolating it into your own story or novel. In other words, here is a literary critic who speaks to writers. If only more literary critics did the same. Usually, the best literary critics, in my mind, are already writers. Nabokov's critiques of Kafka, Dickens, Tolstoy, Gogol are some of the best lit. crit. I have ever read.

I highly recommend this book. Read it and feel your own bowels rejoice at the freedom of carnivalesque imagery, sentiment and enthusiasm for the lower bodily stratums ability to digest, defecate, pee and procreate. EnjoY!(less)

This work is both exhausting and exhaustive. Bakhtin pushes one's patience to the limits while describing the images in Rabelais due to the time he spends on each thing he encounters in his examination. For the reason of his tirelessness, I have rated this book five stars. However, after about two-h......more

This work is both exhausting and exhaustive. Bakhtin pushes one's patience to the limits while describing the images in Rabelais due to the time he spends on each thing he encounters in his examination. For the reason of his tirelessness, I have rated this book five stars. However, after about two-hundred pages, I was ready for the book to be done.

Bakhtin makes the following three major points:

1) Rabelais' images are dialectical, meaning that things tend to be both positive and negative at the same time, and what he is describing at one moment is positive and the next negative. He does not use the word dialectical.

2) Following from this dialectical approach, Rabelais is essentially a realist writer writing within certain constraints (or freedoms as the case is) which allows him to take liberties.

3) The freedoms under which Rabelais is writing is the freedom of folk humor and the "carnivalesque", which is fundamentally different than satire. The result of his writing in this thematic mode is that the exaggerations, which are otherwise realistic, are grotesques.

To follow the above list is to see a circle, that the grotesques are in some way dialectical and both celebrate and denigrate their subjects. Such grotesques can only be the product of folk humor. Rabelais is bawdy, and his politics are often upfront, as Bakhtin describes at the end of the work, and not hidden behind various forms of satire.

I read Rabelais because I had read the dialogic imagination, and Bakhtin spends time on Rabelais in the dialogic imagination. Taking the time to read Bakhtin's work on Rabelais has been informative. His work is thorough, meditative, but not always the most exciting.(less)

A philosophy of laughter, public space, the carnival, the banquet, the grotesque body, and other bodily and material baseness in the middle ages, the Renaissance and in the work of Rabelais. Interesting ideas on the flattening of hierarchical, vertical space, and the shift towards historical time in......more

A philosophy of laughter, public space, the carnival, the banquet, the grotesque body, and other bodily and material baseness in the middle ages, the Renaissance and in the work of Rabelais. Interesting ideas on the flattening of hierarchical, vertical space, and the shift towards historical time in the body of the grotesque people. Grotesque men as the microcosmos. An anthropological-anatomic history of the universe. A becoming-body, or the body in a process of infinite metamorphosis. The body as the center of all things and engine of life and death. Truths as relative. Immortality in death. In a few words, the humanism of Rabelais. An infinite process of negation of the old and affirmation of the new, of birth and death, of hell's comedy, of praises and insults. A carnavalesque accompaniment, if you will, to the work of Alycofybas himself.(less)

Call it the history of laughter.

why is carnival culture and the humorous side of folk-culture so little documented in historical books?

The fact that humor and carnival culture of the lowest people beholds a ancient reappearing wisdom - that it is something revolutionary that ......more

Call it the history of laughter.

why is carnival culture and the humorous side of folk-culture so little documented in historical books?

The fact that humor and carnival culture of the lowest people beholds a ancient reappearing wisdom - that it is something revolutionary that questions established ideas in society and religion by seeing things

eternally unfinished and ambiguous.

i love the thoughts in this book.(less)