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A dozen essays selected and revised from presentations at a 1991 symposium in Los Angeles examine some of the enduring issues surrounding the 16th-century French writer. Among them are his hermeneutic beginnings and endings, humanism, anti-feminism, religious views, and his portrayal of early-modern low culture. Includes an overall bibliography. No index. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.


Review
"Rabelais scholars will find this volume stimulating and enlightening."-- Sixteenth Century Journal


Book Description
In François Rabelais: Critical Assessments, Jean-Claude Carron brings together a distinguished group of senior scholars who have found themselves at the center of an ongoing debate about historical contextualization and interpretive strategies. Chapters explore such issues as the "design" and composition of the text, Rabelais as humanist, his antifeminism, his religious "position" as revealed by biblical or evangelical references, and particular aspects of low early-modern culture. A chapter on Rabelais and Erasmus draws essential differences between the two "giants of European humanism.""This is a book which will appeal particularly to specialists of Renaissance French literature but also to scholars of other European Renaissance literatures... First-rate literary criticism."--Lance K. Donaldson-Evans, University of Pennsylvania.Contributors: Jean-Claude Carron, Richard Regosin, Ramond La Charité, Gérard Defaux, Terence Cave, Michel Jeanneret, Carla Freccero, François Rigolot, Thomas Greene, Edwin Duval, Richard Regosin, Jean-Claude Margolin, Marc Bensimon, Michael J. B. Allen.


About the Author
Jean-Claude Carron is associate professor of French at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Discours de l'errance amoureuse: Une lecture du "canzoniere" de Pontus de Tyard.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In Francois Rabelais: Critical Assessments, Jean-Claude Carron brings together a distinguished group of senior scholars who have found themselves at the center of an ongoing debate about historical contextualization and interpretive strategies. Throughout the book, the authors address certain recurring themes from a variety of critical points of view. The hermeneutic closure or opening of Rabelais's text, crucial to most recent critical debate, is in question throughout. Individual chapters explore such issues as the "design" and composition of the text, Rabelais as humanist, his antifeminism, his religious "position" as revealed by biblical or evangelical references, and particular aspects of low early-modern culture. A chapter on Rabelais and Erasmus points up essential differences between the two "giants of European humanism."

FROM THE CRITICS

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