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Enter Rabelais, Laughing
While most books about Rabelais have relatively little to say about his comedic genius, Enter Rabelais, Laughing analyzes the many sides of Rabelais's humor, focusing on why his writing was so hilariously funny to sixteenth-century readers. The author begins by discussing how the Renaissance defined laughter and situates Rabelais in a long tradition of literary laughter. Subsequent chapters examine specific contexts relevant to Gargantua and Pantagruel, beginning with the comic aspects of epic, chronicle, mock-epic, and farce, and proceeding to Renaissance and Reformation humanist satire, rhetoric, medicine, and law. All of these chapters combine information, much of it new, on the humanist message Rabelais wanted to convey to his readers, with an analysis of how he used his wit to reinforce his message.
Rarely is a writer's work treated in such illuminating detail. On a broad level, Enter Rabelais, Laughing serves as an excellent introduction to French Renaissance literature and exhibits a remarkably charming and lucid writing style, free of jargon. To Rabelais scholars in particular it offers a thorough and innovative analysis that corrects misconceptions and questions commonly held views.
Considered one of the foremost scholars in sixteenth-century French and Romance language studies, Barbara C. Bowen is professor of French and comparative literature at Vanderbilt University. She is the current president of the Renaissance Society of America and is also the author of several previous monographs, including Words and the Man in French Renaissance Literature (1983).
Enter Rabelais, Laughing is a lively, accessible work, overflowing with new material.
--Florence Weinberg, Trinity University
Barbara Bowen's examination of the many facets of laughter and the comic in Rabelais focuses on perhaps the essential and often neglected or misunderstood Francois Rabelais-- Rabelais the comedian.
--Raymond C. La Charite, University of Kentucky
I loved Enter Rabelais, Laughing. It is a splendid achievement.
--Charles A. Porter, Yale University
This is the best, most serious, and most entertaining introduction to the orthodox Rabelais one could wish for.
--Terence Cave, St. John's College, Oxford