Rabelais and Bakhtin: Popular Culture in "Gargantua and Pantagruel" [Hardcover]

Richard M. Berrong (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1986

In Rabelais and Bakhtin, Richard M. Berrong demonstrates both the historical and textual weaknesses of the argument advanced by Mikhail Bakhtin and his influential study Rabelais and His World. The publication of Bakhtin's book in the West in the late 1960s brought both Rabelais and Bakhtin to the attention of students interested in the "New Criticism" in literature. Bakhtin agrued that the key to Rabelais's narratives was to be found in their language of popular culture, which was intended to free his readers from the ideological "prison house" of official, establishment discourse; to provide them with a nonofficial perspective from which to view—and combat—the establishment and its institutions.

Since the publication of Bakhtin's study, scholars such as Peter Burke, Natalie Zemon Davis, and Carlo Ginzburg have shown that the relationship of the upper classes to popular culture changed in the first half of the sixteenth century. Previously these classes had participated fully in the culture of the people (while adhering to their own), but at that time they undertook to exclude popular culture from their lives and from their world.

In his refutation of Bakhtin's thesis, Berrong demonstrates the complex and shifting role of popular culture in Rabelais's narratives. His conclusions should interest not only readers of Gargantua and Pantagruel but all students of the sixteenth century, since the use and exclusion of popular culture is an issue in the study of many of the writers, artists, and composers of the period.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Berrong''s systematic refutation of Bakhtin''s Rabelais and His World is welcome. Its timing and relevance are perfect. What he says had to be said. It cleans the atmosphere, eliminates wrong ideas, puts Rabelais in a proper perspective, and addresses questions of grat importance for our understanding not only of Rabelais, but of sixteenth-century literature as well."—Gérard Defaux, Johns Hopkins University

(G���rard Defaux )

About the Author

Richard M. Berrong is an assistant professor of French at Kent State University. He is the author of Every Man for Himself: Social Order and Its Dissolution in Rabelais (1985).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 156 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (June 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803211910
• ISBN-13: 978-0803211919
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,195,252 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars concerned about a fine culture, December 23, 2010

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rabelais and Bakhtin: Popular Culture in "Gargantua and Pantagruel" (Paperback)

There is a very detailed description of the change in style, showing that Rabelais was tamed by the need to be more refined when he joined a royal court trip to Italy as a physician. Rabelais mentioned an Italian novel, Orlando furioso (1516) by Ludovico Ariosto, in the Prologue of the 1534 edition of Pantagruel. The heterogeneity of an amazing mixture of styles including popular culture praised by Bakhtin was considered vulgar, representative of a common, ignorant and mindless menial horde that Rabelais quickly learned to disdain, as was the newly honorable style for nobles of that time. There was a Peasant's War of 1524/25 which was hostile to those in power, and the Reformation and Counter-Reformation added to condemnation of moral license which the Catholic church began to consider pagan practices. This book is a scholarly attempt to defend some attitudes "that escaped Bakhtin entirely. I can't say that I am altogether happy to have noticed it myself." (p. 136, n. 37).