RABELAIS, FRANÇOIS. - Writer, b. probably at La Devinière (Touraine) ca. 1494, d. in Apr. 1555 (?). In 1521 he is a Franciscan friar at Fontenay-le-Comte, then passes among the Benedictines of St-Pierre de Maillezais. A friend of Budé (v.) and of Bouchet, in 1530 he is a bachelor in the Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier and in 1532 a physician in the hospital of Notre Dame de Pitié. At Lyon he deepens his humanistic friendships, attaches himself to E. Dolet (v.) and begins to write Pantagruel, continuing it with Gargantua, works that aroused wide scandal in the ecclesiastical circles of Lyon, inasmuch as they were reputed immoral and "libertine." In 1535-36 he is absolved at Rome of the guilt of having abandoned the monastic habit. But from then on his relations with the clergy were no longer good (the 3rd book of Pantagruel, published in 1546, was condemned at Paris by the Sorbonne; the 4th, published in 1552, was violently attacked for its anti-curial satires).
R. owes his fame to Gargantua and Pantagruel (the minor works, if they serve to make his personality better known, add nothing to the absoluteness of his art: almanacs, letters, Sciomachie, etc.). The story of the childhood, the travels, the adventures, the wars of the giant Pantagruel, and the story of Gargantua, father of Pantagruel, give R. occasion to weave a narrative, fanciful and rich in the "gigantic" of the 1st book, or in the intellectual freedom of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th books, or in the satirical vein of the 5th (for whatever may have remained of R.'s initial inspiration, because the drafting of the 5th book is certainly not his). What interests us here is the ideal substratum of Rabelaisian writing: R. is in polemic with the priesthood, mediator between God and man, but he is not a "free spirit"; the myth that has been made of him as a libertine is not accurate. Today's criticism (Febvre) rejects, perhaps going beyond the limit, the interpretation that sees in R. atheistic and "rationalistic" "mysterious designs," rather than the simple wish to make people laugh. The problem must therefore be posed in terms of the sixteenth-century religious crisis, and particularly of Erasmian humanism: Erasmus and R., Febvre sees with finesse (v. op. cit. in bibl. p. 334), "ont senti des mystérieux passages s'ouvrir entre leur christianisme et la sagesse antique. L'un comme l'autre fondent volentiers leur théologie sur des textes sacrés et sur des textes profanes tout à la fois." Not atheism, therefore, but a humanitarian religion trusting in the goodness of natural forces, scarcely feeling the weight of original sin.
In the history of pedagogy the work represents an educational "method" of secularizing humanism: the education of the young man is understood there as a vindication of the freedom that spurs the individual's energy in acquiring a new wisdom entirely earthly, a new eudaimonia rich in that serenity which the humanae litterae give. Also in the history of political utopia R. has a notable place in delineating "natural freedom," the Fay ce que voudras of the abbey of Thélème. But it would be wrong to insist too much on a presumed ever-present allegorism in R., because he remains above all a very great narrator: perhaps modern Europe has never seen one richer in satirical, humorous, comic humors.
Bibliography4 works
Massimo Petrocchi