Approaches to Teaching the Works of François Rabelais
- Editors: Todd W. Reeser, Floyd Gray
- Pages: x & 342 pp.
- Published: 2011
- ISBN: 9781603290982 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603290975 (Hardcover)
“This volume meets an essential pedagogical need in the field and will therefore be a most welcome addition to the MLA Approaches series.”
—David Posner, Loyola University, Chicago
The works of François Rabelais—Gargantua, Pantagruel, the Tiers livre, and the Quart livre—embody the Renaissance spirit of discovery and are crucial to the development of early modern prose and to the birth of the novel. Rabelais’s exuberant satire deals not only with the major cultural and intellectual issues of his time but also with issues of interest to students today.
This volume, in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature, suggests the materials that can be used in teaching Rabelais: editions, translations, criticism, Web sites, music, artwork, and films. Thirty-four essays present strategies for the classroom, discussing the classical and biblical allusions; the context of humanism and evangelical reform; various themes (giants, monsters, war); both feminism and masculinity as vexing subjects; Rabelais’s erudition; and the challenges of teaching his inventive language, his ambiguity, and his scatology.
Tom Conley
Edwin M. Duval
Gary Ferguson
Carl Fisher
Carla Freccero
Andrea Frisch
Kirsten A. Fudeman
Timothy Hampton
Elisabeth Hodges
Karen James
Scott D. Juall
Marcus Keller
Virginia Krause
Lawrence D. Kritzman
David LaGuardia
Kathleen Long
Deborah N. Losse
Mary McKinley
Jan Miernowski
John O’Brien
James M. Palmer
John Parkin
Jeff Persels
Michael Randall
Richard Regosin
Bernd Renner
François Rigolot
Jerry Root
Cynthia Skenazi
Walter Stephens
Timothy J. Tomasik
Valerie Worth-Stylianou
Elizabeth Chesney Zegura
Acknowledgments (ix)
Preface (1)
PART ONE: MATERIALS
Editions and Translations (5)
Recommended Readings for Students and Instructors (8)
Aids to Teaching (11)
PART TWO: APPROACHES
Introduction (23)
Literary and Textual Approaches to Rabelais
Rabelais and Hybridity (37)
The Prologues: Rabelais on Reading and Writing (47)
Intertextuality: The Bible (54)
Panurge, Parody, and Perplexity: From Satyr Play to Satire (62)
Rabelais and Language: Change, Decay, Transition (73)
Teaching Rabelais’s Language: A Literary Approach (80)
Teaching Rabelais’s Language: A Linguist’s Perspective (86)
Teaching Rabelais in English Translation (92)
Cultural Contexts
The Prologue of Gargantua; or, A Lesson in Scandal Management (100)
Teaching Rabelais’s Backside (110)
Locating and Teaching Politics in Rabelais (115)
Writing Reform: Evangelical Reform and Religious Controversy in Rabelais’s Work (122)
On Gargantuan Individualism (130)
Utopian Dimensions of Pantagruel (135)
Rabelais and Cartography (144)
The World in Pantagruel’s Mouth: Alimentary Aesthetics and Culinary Consciousness (159)
Rabelais’s Giants (165)
Teaching Gender and Sexuality
Rabelais and Feminism (174)
Queer Rabelais? (182)
Masculinity and the Question of Gender (192)
Specific Episodes
On Becoming Human: Gargantua, Chapter 13 (200)
The Predicament of Peace in Gargantua (211)
Teaching Gargantua’s Letter to Pantagruel (219)
Deciphering the Sibyl: The Third Book, Chapters 16–18 (226)
Modes of Transit: Domestication and Estrangement in The Fourth Book (233)
Classroom Contexts
Thawing the Frozen Words: The Importance of Aural and Visual Culture in Teaching Rabelais (238)
“And Now for Something Completely Different”? Approaching Gargantua through Monty Python (248)
Rare Books and Web Pages: Using Internet Resources to Teach Rabelais (255)
Reading the Rabelaisian Storm: An Exercise in Student Motivation (262)
Teaching through Student Performance: Rabelais and the Rassias Method (268)
Reconstructing Early Modern Folk Laughter through Creative Writing (274)
Comparative Approaches to Rabelais
An Allegorical Framework for Reading Gargantua in a Great-Books Class (279)
Comic Realism: Teaching Gargantua and Pantagruel in Comparative Contexts (287)
“The Truth Is Out There”: Rabelais in a Survey Course on Monsters (298)
Notes on Contributors (309)
Survey Participants (313)
Works Cited (315)
Index (337)
