[In the following essay, Rigolot discusses the relationship between Rabelais's apparent misogynist treatment of the lady from Paris in Pantagruel and the evangelic humanist ideology which he embraced.]

Là vous verrez … petites
joyeusettez toutes
veritables; ce sont beaux textes d’évangilles
en
françoys.

—Rabelais, Pantagruel

For several decades now, the interpretation of Rabelais's works has been greatly influenced by scholarship on Christian humanism and the revival of evangelical thinking in the early sixteenth century. For the last thirty years, serious critical work has been done to establish a horizon of expectation that removes our author from anachronistic libertine or rationalist suspicions and places him squarely, though not exclusively, within the Erasmian brand of humanist culture (Defaux, Duval, Screech, Weinberg). Few Rabelais scholars today, even those who question the validity of reconstructing authorial intentionality, disagree with the need for sound historical recontextualization.¹

Yet problems do arise when we turn to the interpretative reading of specific passages and characters, especially in Rabelais's first book, Pantagruel. For there is always the danger of “reducing the text either to a single ideological reading, or to a reading that posits an author having at all times recoverable intentions and meanings to convey” (Schwartz, J. 1992, 2). For example, what are we to make of the innumerable antisocial, immoral, disruptive elements that seem to interfere with the positive valuation of a humanist new order? Although Mikhail Bakhtin's approach may often sound grossly over-stated today, the significance of folk and popular culture must still be retained to a large extent for the proper understanding of Rabelais's early fiction.² As modern social historians have amply shown, upper-class participation in popular culture was an important fact of sixteenth-century European life.³ Even Richard Berrong, who has undertaken a systematic refutation of Bakhtin's carnivalesque interpretation, agrees that folk culture is given a prominent role in Pantagruel, although not to the exclusion of learned humanist culture (Berrong, 121).

In the context of the times, the systematic vilification of women was the prevailing attitude, practiced routinely by monks to blunt their natural desires; the Franciscans and later the Capuchins were particularly noted for it. This was paradoxically reinforced by the newly revived Platonism, which identified woman as the changeable, fickle, and treacherous luna as opposed to the constant, proud, and dependable masculine sun.⁴ As a former Franciscan himself, Rabelais must have been well acquainted with the particular brand of misogynous clichès that loomed large in many of the types of works he must have known: Jean de Meung's Romance of the Rose, the fabliaux, and various antifeminist satires written from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries (Bloch, 37-58).

The question I would like to raise here is, how can unbridled male sexual aggression, as exemplified in many episodes of Pantagruel, together with humiliation and degradation of the female, coexist with the evangelical doctrine of caritas, so dear to Rabelais's friends, which says “Love thy neighbor like thyself”? In other words, what happens to the exemplarity of Christian humanist discourse when it is expressed with the simultaneous presence of profoundly disturbing elements in moral behavior? More specifically, if we take the characteristic patterns that emerge from Rabelais's first book, to what extent can the recurrence of trickery, obscenity, and violence against women still qualify, in the Rabelaisian narrator's words, as “beaux textes d’évangilles en françoys” [fine Gospel texts in French]?⁵

In the following pages, I propose to concentrate on the single episode of Pantagruel devoted to Panurge's and Pantagruel's twin amatory adventures with a lady of Paris.⁶ Although the episode has been the object of some probing critical scrutiny (Freccero), I do not think enough attention has been paid to the evangelical intertext that must have been easily recognized by the Christian humanist entourage of Rebelais. First, I will try to reconstruct the horizon of expectation for the episode on the basis of direct biblical allusions and contemporary evangelical commentaries. I will then offer a set of possible interpretations that may problematize the modern evangelical readings of the episode and question the exemplary status of Rabelais's and, more generally, Renaissance fiction.

Few modern readers may fail to interpret the attitude of Panurge toward the Parisian lady as a classic case of sexual harassment. Here, the usually ambivalent figure of the rogue appears at its basest and most vile; he becomes the repugnant “figure of phallologocentrism par excellence” (Freccero 1986b, 47). Although his offensive attempt to seduce a woman may be seen as a replay of Genesis as well as an attack on the conventional language of love in civilized society, the implications of the episode go much further. Recent critics have presented radically opposite views, which can be summarized as follows: Is Panurge subverting the foundations of social order by “dissolving all respect for hierarchy, feminine honour and marriage” (Schwartz, J. 1990, 39)? Or, in a more positive way, is he humbling a rich, haughty, pharisaical character, who sinned against caritas, thus serving the larger “redemptive design” of Rabelais's “Christian epic” (Duval 1991, 75, 119, 140)?

Before addressing these questions, let us turn to chapter 21, “Comment Panurge feut amoureux d’une haulte dame de Paris” (1:326) [How Panurge was smitten by a great lady of Paris]. The narrative of Panurge's sexual advances is divided into three neatly distinct parts, corresponding to three consecutive seduction scenes: the initial declaration (1:327-28) is repeated twice the next day, at church (1:329) and after dinner (1:330-31). Most sixteenth-century learned readers would have recognized a scenario familiar to them, namely the three temptations of Christ in the Gospels. Although the narrative is available from two of the four evangelists, Matthew and Luke, with only slight variations, I will concentrate on Matthew's version for reasons that will become clear. As we shall see, a parallel reading of Matthew 4:1-11 and Pantagruel 21 is revealing.

In the first temptation, Satan the tempter says to Jesus: “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” But Jesus, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, replies, “It is written Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:1-4). In Pantagruel, from his very first appearance in chapter 9, Panurge is portrayed as a famished rogue who “lives by bread alone.” He manages to seduce Pantagruel by begging for bread in several languages. His obsessive urge to feed on bread alone is reflected in his own name, Pan/urge (in need of bread), as he himself playfully indicates to his newly found master: “Seigneur … mon vray et propre nom de baptesme est Panurge … car pour ceste heure j’ay necessité bien urgente du repaistre” (1:269-70, my emphasis) [My Lord … my true proper baptismal name is Needbread … for right now I have very urgent need to feed].⁷

During his first attempt to seduce the Parisian lady, Panurge the tempter uses food metaphors, especially manna, as he mixes obscene language with hyperbolic clichés of Petrarchan love to taunt his victim: “Ce n’est que miel, ce n’est que sucre, ce n’est que manne celeste, de tout ce qu’est en vous. … Doncques pour gaigner temps, bouttepoussenjambions” (1:328, my emphasis) [All that is in you is nothing but honey, nothing but sugar, nothing but celestial manna. … So, to save time, let's push-thrust-straddle (204)].

In Christ's first temptation, the complete Old Testament verse from which Jesus quotes to Satan also talks about celestial manna: “And He [the Lord] humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that He might make that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live” (Deut 8:3, my emphasis).

The lesson is clear. If man does not only live by bread alone, he certainly should not live either by the kind of manne celeste (i.e., sex) that Panurge has in mind. Biblical language has been twisted by the lecher to serve his own purpose, but the reader who knows the Gospel narrative will know the difference.⁸

Panurge's second seduction attempt happens the following day at church: “Au lendemain il [Panurge] se trouva à l’eglise à l’heure qu’elle [la dame] alloit à la messe” (1:329) [The next day he was in the church at the time when she was going to mass].

Interestingly enough, in Matthew's version, the second temptation of Christ also happens in a holy place. The devil takes Jesus to Jerusalem and places him “on a pinnacle of the Temple” (Matt. 4:5). Here again Satan plays the game of biblical quotations, using a truncated verse of Psalm 91 to justify his claims: “And [Satan] saith to Him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning Thee: and in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash Thy foot against a stone” (Matt. 4:6, my emphasis).

Likewise Panurge literally urges his lady to “cast herself down” by yielding to his sexual desire. She should not worry because he will protect her as a guardian angel; he makes a deep bow and kneels close beside her. He tells her that his “cousteau” (i.e., his penis) is entirely at her service: “il est bien à vostre commendement, corps et biens, tripes et boyaulx” (1:329) [it is at your command, body and gods (sic), tripes and bowels (205)]. And lest she hurt herself with the precious stones of her rosary (“ses patenostres”), he cuts them off and sends them to the pawn shop [“les couppa très bien, et les emporta à la fryperie” (1:329)]. One could hardly find a more devious and self-serving transposition of Psalm 91. Panurge has obviously learned much from Satan about the art of textual manipulation. But the Parisian lady rejects the second temptation by retorting to Panurge, “Allez (dist elle), allez … laissez moy icy prier Dieu” (1:329) [Go away, go away … leave me alone here to pray to God]. This is a direct echo of Christ's response to Satan as he rejects the second temptation. Undaunted by his enemy's textual mastery, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:16 and says: “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matt. 4:7).⁹

Panurge's third and final attempt to seduce the Parisian lady probably offers the clearest parallel with the narrative of Christ's encounter with the devil. In Matthew's version (Matt. 4:8-11), the devil takes Jesus to a high mountain and shows him “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.” Then he says to him, “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” In Rabelais's transposition, Panurge shows his lady a great purse which she believes is full of money: “Après disner, Panurge l’alla veoir, portant en sa manche une grande bourse pleine d’escuz du Palais et de gettons” (1:330) [After dinner Panurge went to see her, carrying in his sleeve a big purse full of law-court counters and tokens (205)].

The trickster uses these valueless tokens to lure her, promising to buy her much richer rosary beads than the ones he has stolen from her. By displaying a cornucopia of precious stones in front of her eyes, he hopes to arouse her desires. The tempter's verbal virtuosity is just as dazzling as the gorgeous turquoises, sapphires, and diamonds he promises her:

“En aymerez vous mieulx d’or bien esmaillé, en forme de grosses spheres ou de beaulx lacz d’amours, ou bien toutes massifves comme gros lingotz? ou si en voulez de ebene, ou de gros hyacinthes, de gros grenatz taillez, avecques les marches de fines turquoyses, ou de beaulx topazes marchez, de fins saphiz, ou de beaulx balays [rubis] à tout grosses marches de dyamans à vingt et huyt quarres?

Non, non, c’est trop peu. J’en sçay un beau chapellet de fines esmerauldes, marchèes de ambre gris coscotè et à la boucle un union Persicque gros comme une pomme d’orange! elles ne coustent que vingt et cinq mille ducatz. Je vous en veulx faire un present, car j’en ay du content.”

(1:330-31)

[Will you like some better in nicely enameled gold in the shape of great spheres or nice love-knots, or else all massive like gold ingots? Or do you want them of ebony, or big hyacinths, great cut garnets, with markers of fine turquoise or of lovely marked topazes, fine sapphires, or beautiful rubies with great markers of twenty-four carat diamonds? No, no, that's too little. I know of a beautiful chaplet of fine emeralds, with markers of dappled ambergris, at the clasp a giant Persian pearl as big as an orange! It costs only twenty-five thousand ducats, and I want to make you a present of it, for I have enough ready cash for it.]

(205-6)

The temptation is great indeed and, we are told, makes the lady's mouth water: “Par la vertus desquelles parolles il luy faisoit venir l’eau à la bouche” (1:331). Nevertheless, she does not give way. Her moral strength is clearly demonstrated when, politely but categorically, she refuses the offer: “Non, je vous remercie; je ne veulx rien de vous” (1:331).

In the Gospel narrative, Christ's last reply to the tempter is just as categorical. It is the famous Vade [retro] Satana [Get thee hence, Satan].¹⁰ We can see an echo of this imperative command in the lady's earlier plea to her tormenter: “Je vous ay, (dist elle), jà dict tant de foys que vous ne me tenissiez plus telles parolles … Partez d’icy” (1:330, my emphasis) [I’ve already told you ever so many times, said she, not to talk to me that way any more … Get out of here (205)].

To Satan, Jesus then quotes from Deuteronomy 6:13: “for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” It would be out of character for the Parisian lady to quote the Scriptures. In her response to Panurge, she nevertheless refers to God's commandment of caritas: “Quant est de moy, je ne vous hays poinct, car, comme Dieu le commande, je ayme tout le monde” (1:330) [As far as I am concerned, I don’t hate you, for, as God commands, I love everyone (205)].

And just as Matthew's narrative of the Three Temptations ends with the vanquished Satan leaving the scene, Rabelais's chapter 21 ends with the defeated Panurge running away for fear of a beating.¹¹

At this juncture, one more textual detail should be pointed out that adds considerable credibility to the biblical intertext. At the beginning of chapter 21, Rabelais's narrator contrasts Panurge with “ces dolens contemplatifz amoureux de Karesme, lesquelz poinct à la chair ne touchent” (1:327, my emphasis) [those doleful and contemplative Lent lovers who never tamper with the flesh]. This allusion to the season of Lent must have functioned as an interpretative signal to sixteenth-century readers. Quaresme, also spelled Karesme (modern French Carême), comes from Latin Quadraqesima, the ordinal form of the word for forty. It denotes the fortieth Sunday (Dominica Quadragesima), the day on which Lent, the forty-day period of fasting before Easter, was to begin (Kinser, 277-78). Therefore, properly speaking, Quaresme designates the first Sunday in Lent. Interestingly enough, Matthew's narrative of Christ's Three Temptations was the major liturgical reading of the mass for Quadragesima Sunday. There was a logical reason for it, since Jesus had fasted for forty days and forty nights before being submitted to temptation.

Moreover, in the edition he provided of the Evangile for the “Premier Dimenche de Quaresme,” Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples had written a rich commentary on Matthew's version of the Three Temptations (121-24). Lefèvre's text was, of course, compulsory reading in Christian humanist circles. Between 1525 and 1533, his elaborate commentary enjoyed considerable success, at at time when Rabelais was busy writing his Pantagruel. It is not surprising to find echoes not only of Matthew's text but of Lefèvre's own “Exhortation” in the three temptations of Panurge. Take, for instance, Lefèvre's uses of the double metaphor of the sword and the stick as powerful weapons to resist the sin of despair in adversity: “Pour nous monstrer où c’est que nous debvons en temps d’adversité cercher consolation, il (le Christ) a prins ung bon appuy, ung bon glaive et baston contre luy (Satan), c’est assavoir la parolle de Dieu” (122, my emphasis) [In order to show us where we should look for solace in time of adversity, Christ took a good aid, a good sword and a good stick against Satan, that is the Word of God].

In Rabelais's first seduction scene, the Parisian lady tries to deflect Panurge's advances by threatening him twice, first with “ung bon glaive” of her own invention: “Meschant fol, vous appartient il me tenir telz propos? A qui pensez vous parler? Allez, ne vous trouvez jamais devant moi; car, si n’estoit pour un petit, je vous feroys coupper bras et jambes” (1:327, my emphasis) [You crazy wretch, have you any right to talk to me that way? Whom do you think you are talking to? Go away, never come near me again; for but for one little thing, I’d have your arms and legs cut off (203)].

Then, as Panurge remains undeterred by these threatening words and keeps harassing her, she threatens him with a good “baston”: “Allez, meschant, allez. Si vous me dictes encores un mot, je appelleray le monde, et vous feroy icy assommer de coups” (1:327, my emphasis) [Go away, you wretch, go away. If you say one more word to me, I’ll call for help and have you beaten on the spot].

In a typical stylistic twist, Rabelais has literalized Lefèvre's double metaphor. In his hands, the spiritual meaning of the “bon glaive et baston” has been displaced to retrieve its original, physical sense. Is Rabelais telling us that stark, unmediated violence must sometimes be used against the dark powers of Satan? Is he drawing a clear parallel between Panurge and the devil, based on recognizable allusions to the Gospel narrative and the liturgical reading of the First Sunday in Lent? Or is he lightly musing about Lefèvre's evangelical commentary, much in the spirit of his book, offering his readers “petites joyeusettez” [little jollities], which his narrator wishes to pass off as “beaux textes d’èvangilles en françoys” (Saulnier, 177) [fine Gospel texts in French]? Before proposing an interpretation, let us continue our reading of the evangelical intertext in the same episode.

The portrayal of Panurge, mutatis mutandis, after Satan's model, as a devilish tempter with no redeeming value in his harassment of the Parisian lady, should not come as a surprise. Much information has already been given about the rogue's “meurs et condictions” (1:300) and his obsessive interest in “mille petites diableries” (1:304). The question can be raised, however, whether Panurge becomes totally diabolical in Rabelais's fiction. To be sure, the narrator never conceals his contempt for the vain “glorieux” (1:326) whose masterfully hidden deception is betrayed by his “faulx visaige” (1:331). Yet, at the same time, Panurge is presented as a wonderful storyteller, a dazzling word player, and a great punster whose verbal resourcefulness seems to have no limits. Can Panurge be condemned as satanic by Rabelais, the embodiment of linguistic virtuosity?¹²

Here the evangelical commentary on the Second Temptation of Christ may be helpful again. In Matthew's narrative, Lefèvre remarks, Satan misquotes the Bible and uses Psalm 91 out of context to serve his purpose: “En la maniere d’ung trompeur, d’ung faulx prophete et seducteur, il [Satan] sincopoit et laissoit aucuns motz du texte. … Et ce voyant, nostre seigneur l’a derechief confondu par l’escripture non sincopée ou changée, mais purement et veritablement alleguée” (122-23, my emphasis) [In the manner of a cheater, a false prophet and a seducer, he (Satan) would syncopate (cut off) some words and leave others in the text. … And seeing this, our Lord confounded him again, not through syncopated or adulterated Scriptures but through pure, truthful quotations].

Like Satan, Panurge is a great “sincopeur” of texts. In an earlier chapter, we recall, he had tried to justify his petty larcenies by playing with another passage from Matthew: Centuplum accipies (1:309) [“You shall receive a hundredfold” (Matt. 19:29)]. In the second temptation, he embarrasses the respectable lady with shocking double entendre, playing on “A Beaumont le Vicomte” and the obscene meaning of his “cousteau” (1:329).¹³ But the narrator himself shares his taste for equivocation: “Panurge commença estre en reputation en la ville de Paris … si bien qu’il entreprint venir au dessus d’une des grandes dames de la ville” (1:326, my emphasis) [Panurge began to get a reputation around the city of Paris … so much that he decided to come on top of one of the great ladies of the city].

The erotic meaning of “venir au dessus” is obvious.¹⁴ But the narrator's point of view is interesting here. If, in the light of evangelical caritas, Rabelais wants to condemn Panurge as Satan, how can he afford to have Alcofribas share Satan's deceitful language? One possibility would be to consider the sentence “il entreprint venir au dessus” as a form of free indirect discourse (“discours indirect libre”), that is, a discourse in which the narrator adopts his character's voice. In terms of historical stylistics, such a usage might be viewed as anachronistic (Genette, 194). It may be simpler and safer to allow for the narrator's own playful space and recognize the participative role of Rabelais's persona in Panurge's delight for “satanic verses.”

Such an interpretation is confirmed by Pantagruel's attitude in the episode. Far from distancing himself from Panurge's dirty tricks, he shows unequivocal approval of what he considers to be his friend's creative genius. When Panurge urges him gleefully to watch how he took revenge of the Parisian lady, he gladly accepts the invitation and acknowledges his enjoyment of the show: “‘Maistre, je vous prye, venez veoir tous les chiens du pays qui sont assemblés à l’entour d’une dame, la plus belle de ceste ville, et la veullent jocqueter.’ A quoy voluntiers consentit Pantagruel, et veit le mystere, qu’il trouva fort beau et nouveau” (1:334, my emphasis) [‘Master, I beg you, come and see all the dogs in the land gathered around a lady, the fairest in this town, and they want to ride her.’ To which Pantagruel readily agreed, and saw the show, which he found very fine and novel (208)].

If the Christian law of caritas (“Love thy neighbor like thyself”) is the central issue of Rabelais's epic, then the eponymous hero has obviously forgotten his mission. As a Good Samaritan, he should have rushed to the lady's rescue. Instead, by siding with the devil and forsaking an innocent victim, Pantagruel has become a problematic hero, fascinated by and acquiescent to the antisocial instincts of his friend in an offensive way.

Panurge is not, however, the triumphant Satan of Genesis who was able to lure Eve and make her eat the forbidden fruit; he is cast, rather, as the Satan of the Gospel, thrice defeated by the Word of God. If this is true, then his victim, the Parisian lady, should be seen as a Christlike figure. Such an interpretation runs counter to the traditional view, which holds that the “haughty dame” somehow deserves the degradation Panurge inflicts upon her (Duval 1991, 140-41). As we shall soon see, however, further evidence can be found to reconstruct the lady's character as an unexpected example of imitatio Christi.

Rabelais's portrayal of the lady as a Christlike figure is particularly striking in the second part of chapter 22, “Comment Panurge feist un tour à la dame Parisianne qui ne fut poinct à son advantage” (1:332) [How Panurge played a trick on the Parisian lady that was not to her advantage (207)]. In a most humiliating scene, Panurge, who had promised to avenge himself, has all the dogs of Paris run up to the lady, mount her, and piss all over her: “Tous les chiens qui estoient en l’eglise accoururent à ceste dame, pour l’odeur des drogues que il avoit espandu sur elle. Petitz et grands, gros et menuz, tous y venoyent, tirans le membre, et la sentens et pissans partout sur elle. C’estoyt la plus grande villanie du monde” (1:333, my emphasis) [All the dogs that were in the church ran up to this lady, for the smell of the drug he had sprinkled over her. Great and small, stout and tiny, they all came, freeing up their members, and sniffing her and pissing all over her. It was the dirtiest mess in the world (208)].

This time, the narrator shows unequivocal disapproval. Indeed we are asked to witness the most dreadful thing in the world, a spectacle that paradoxically may also have reminded sixteenth-century readers of an equally dreadful passage in the Gospel narrative.

In the text of Christ's Passion, the paradigmatic scene of degradation is known in the Vulgate as the “Flagellatio et Coronatio” scene. It takes the form of a mock homage staged by Roman soldiers before the Crucifixion. A comparison between Pantagruel 22 and Mathew's version is revealing. Following Pilate's orders, a band of soldiers, like Panurge's dogs, gather around Jesus to humiliate him (“Tunc milites … congregaverunt ad eum universam cohortem”). They smite him, mock him, and spit on him (Matt. 27:27-31; Mark 15:16-20; John 19:1-3). Allowing for Rabelais's proper style, could the transposition of soldiers into dogs be conceivable? “Ces villains chiens compissoyent tous ses habillemens, tant que un grand levrier luy pissa sur la teste, les aultres aux manches, les aultres à la croppe” (1:333) [Those nasty dogs pissed all over her clothes, to the point where a big greyhound pissed on her head, the others in her sleeves, the others on her crupper (208)].

In Matthew's text, the soldiers wrap Jesus in a scarlet robe (“chlamydem coccineam”) and place a crown of thorns on his head. We may note that, in Rabelais's version, the Parisienne is also dressed in red: “ladicte dame s’estoit vestue d’une très belle robbe de satin cramoysi” (1:332, my emphasis) [the said lady had put on a very beautiful grown of crimson satin (207)]. Although she wears no headgear, her “cotte de veloux blanc bien precieux” may be seen as a semantic inversion of the crown of thorns; the rich white velvet serves as a foil to the dark prickly twist placed on Christ's head. But the crucial clue is given by Rabelais's narrator in the first line of the chapter. In the editio princeps we read, “Or notez que le lendemain estoit la grande feste du Corps-Dieu” (Saulnier, 122) [Now note that the next day was the great holiday of Corpus Christi (207)].

Rabelais may have felt that the allusion to the feast of Corpus Christi did not fit with the liturgical calendar he had in mind. At any rate, he later amended this line, presumably changing the wording slightly to give a clearer sense of his intentions. In the definitive edition, we read, “Or notez que le lendemain estoit la grande feste du sacre” (1:332, my emphasis) [Now note that the next day was the great feast of the Coronation].

In sixteenth-century usage sacre, as a substantive noun, could refer both to the Holy Sacrament and the crowning of the king.¹⁵ This fully attested ambivalence may highlight Rabelais's correction as it now allows for an allusion to the mock-coronation ceremony of both Jesus and the “Dame de Paris.”

In Rabelais's rewriting of the Ecce homo scene (John 19:5), the Parisian lady has thus taken the place of the humiliated Christ; she has become the Woman of Sorrows. Perhaps this is the most unexpected example of imitatio Christi one could find in the literature of the period. As we shall see later, Rabelais was also keen on hinting at the lady's ambiguous attitude toward her sexual harasser; his deliberate portrayal of her coyness and of the masculine view of woman as “saying no but meaning yes” cannot be ignored. Yet, at the same time, the lady-as-Christ figure fully conforms with the normal expectations of Rabelais's humanist readers. In his commentaries on the Epistles, Lefèvre d’Etaples had done much to establish the notion of Christiformité (Rom. 8:26, Rom. 13:14, Gal. 4:19, and Col. 3:1): “cette finalité de la vie chrétienne qui nous conduit à revêtir le Christ, à l’imiter, à nous assimiler à lui” (xxxii). Similarly, in his letters to Marguerite d’Angoulème, Guillaume Briçonnet, the leader of the evangelical “groupe de Meaux,” had exhorted the queen to patient resignation in the face of suffering. To imitate Christ was above all to suffer with him and in him the pains of his Passion. The goal of a religious woman like Marguerite was thus to realize the opportunity to merge her own painful flesh with that flesh whose agony was salvation, in Briçonnet's words, “puisque toute la vie du chrestien doibt tendre à mort et plus en approche, plus est christiforme” (1:72, my emphasis). A case might even be made for Rabelais's recognition of Christ's feminine side. The motif, which could be traced back to the Fathers of the Church, was closely linked with the theme of the indignitas hominis.¹⁶

Although it would be exaggerated to see Marguerite as a model for the Parisian lady, some aspects of Rabelais's fictional character may have reminded the readers of the queen's religious fervor. To be sure, the Parisian lady offers a lesson of caritas to Pantagruel. Her words to Panurge in chapter 21 are suffused with Christiformitas: “Je ne vous hays poinct, car, comme Dieu le commande, je ayme tout le monde” (1:330) [As far as I’m concerned, I don’t hate you, for, as God commands, I love everyone (205)].

Like Christ mocked by the soldiers, she was abjectly humiliated: “She looked for some to have pity on her, but there was no man, neither found she any to comfort her” [Psalm 68(69):20]. Not even Pantagruel, whose identity as a type of Messiah is promoted through the mock-epic fiction, showed the slightest pity on her. He simply abandoned her to the dogs in heat. To Pantagruel, the lady's degradation is simply a good show, a fine and original “mystere” (1:334). The word mystere may serve here as a reminder of the biblical text. Although it generally translates as show (spectacle), its religious meaning (“mystery”) may be more relevant to the present situation. The three great mysteries of Christianity are Christ's Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection. Here, Rabelais may play on the ambiguity of the word to refer to the second mysterium fidei as well as to the most famous of all mystery plays, the “mystère de la Passion.” But Pantagruel is totally blind to the implications of his religious vocabulary.

Finally, the narrator's detached comment on Pantagruel's attitude may be read as another sign pointing to the ambivalent flavor of the whole dramatic episode. Just as blind as his hero, Master Alcofribas gleefully stresses the comic aspect of the climactic dog scene with total disregard for the lady's tragic distress: “Mais le bon feut à la procession: en laquelle feurent veuz plus de six cens mille et quatorze chiens à l’entour d’elle, lesquelz luy faisoyent mille hayres: et partout où elle passoit, les chiens frays venuz la suyvoyent à la trasse, pissans par le chemin où ses robbes avoyent touché” (1:334, my emphasis) [But the good part was the procession, in which were to be seen over six hundred thousand and fourteen dogs around her, giving her a thousand annoyances, and everywhere she passed, newcomer dogs followed in her tracks, pissing along the roadway where her clothes had touched (208)].

Yet, as we shall see, Pantagruel will soon receive a message from another Parisian lady, making him understand that he has forsaken her and sinned against Christ's New Commandment of caritas.

The thematics of the Passion narrative can be traced even further in the second part of the episode, the one dealing with Pantagruel's own love story (ch. 23 and 24). As he is about to set sail for Utopia, the giant hero receives a diamond ring from “une dame de Paris” of whom we hear very little except that he has courted her for some time (“laquelle il avoit entretenue bonne espace de temps” [1:337]). After examining the ring carefully, the companions find Hebrew words engraved inside: “LAMAH HAZABTHANI (1:339),” which means “Why hast thou forsaken me?” As an expert in reading rebuslike devices, Panurge is able to decipher the lady's message: “J’entens le cas. Voyez vous ce dyament? C’est un dyamant faulx. Telle est doncques l’exposition de ce que veult dire la dame: ‘Dy, amant faulx, pourquoy me as tu laissée?’” (1:339) [I understand the case. Do you see this diamond? It's a fake diamond. So this is the explanation of what the lady means: “Say, false lover, why hast thou forsaken me?” (212)].

Pantagruel then remembers that, on leaving from Paris, he did not bid his lady farewell: “et luy souvint comment, à son departir, n’avoit dict à Dieu à la dame” (1:339-40) [and he remembered how, on leaving, he had not said farewell to the lady (212)]. For a while he is so depressed that he considers returning to Paris to ask for her forgiveness: “et s’en contristoit, et voluntiers fust retourné à Paris pour faire sa paix avecques elle” (1:340) [and it saddened him, and he would have been inclined to return to Paris to make his peace with her (212)]. But he is reminded of Aeneas's conduct toward Dido and decides to press forward, sacrificing his individual preference to higher ideals. He must set off to defend his fatherland and fulfill his epic destiny (1:340).

Although much critical attention has been given to the ring episode, including interesting comments on an Italian parallel story (Freccero 1986, 48 ff), no one seems to have noticed the profound meaning of this message in the context of Rabelais's transposition of the Passion narrative. Most sixteenth-century humanist readers knew that the Hebrew words engraved on the ring came from the first line of Psalm 21(22), “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” From the Gospel narrative, they knew that Christ had uttered these words in their Aramaic form (“Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani”) before expiring on the Cross (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34).

They also knew that, according to ancient practice, by quoting the incipit one meant to refer to the entire psalm. Last but not least, they knew that Psalm 21(22) talked about mockery by ugly creatures named dogs:

Omnes videntes me, deriserunt me.
[All they that see me laugh me to scorn]
Quoniam circumdederunt me canes multi
Concilium malignantium osedit me
[For many dogs gathered around me
An assembly of wicked creatures closed in on me]
Erue a framea, Deus, animam meam:
Et de manu canis unicam meam.
[Deliver my soul from the sword:
And my darling from the power of the dog.](17)

When Pantagruel finds the Hebrew inscription on the ring, he immediately establishes a textual connection between the line he reads and his own situation.¹⁸ This was common practice in applied allegorical readings of the Bible. As in the case of Augustine's “Tolle, lege,” a scriptural fragment could open the reader's eyes and make a powerfully revealing statement about his own destiny. Unlike Pantagruel, Panurge is totally blind to the implications of the message he has deciphered. Ironically, he is the one who discovered the literal meaning of the rebus, proudly claiming his victory (“J’entens le cas” [1:339]) [I understand the case]. Yet he misses the tropological sense that the biblical quotation obviously has for himself. In the horrible dog scene he has just engineered, he behaves as the worst possible false lover (“amant faulx”). He humiliates the person he was supposed to love. He fails to realize that Pantagruel's “dame de Paris” is speaking to him in unambiguous terms when she quotes Psalm 21(22). No matter how great a decipherer of texts he may be, he never recognizes himself as the one who “laughed her to scorn” when “the dogs gathered around her” and submitted “his darling to their wicked power.” As a typical sexual harasser, he remains unable to realize that the psalm bears a special meaning to him, nanely that he has sinned against the law of caritas.

At this point, several questions of interpretation should be raised that problematize the evangelical reading I have offered. As we have seen, reconstructing a Christian humanist horizon of expectations is an essential step in the hermeneutical process. Just as modern readers must be acquainted with philology to understand the meaning of Rabelais's words, they must also be able to recognize biblical intertexts in order to grasp the meaning of Rabelais's staging of Panurge's misogyny. Yet the interpretative reading of a Renaissance work does not stop here. Contextual fluency is only a prerequisite for a fuller textual understanding of humanist fiction.

In Rabelais's hands, the evangelical scenario is submitted to stylistic manipulations that destabilize the normal relationship between text and ideology. This may involve extratextual satire, intertextual parody, and intratextual irony (Hutcheon, 142-43). By stuffing his narrative with half-recognizable biblical motifs, Rabelais goes beyond the norm of allegorical motivation. His book welcomes all forms of excess, including the overabundant use of evangelical references. This is where Bakhtin's notion of dialogism may be useful in a Christian humanist perspective (Bakhtin 1986). We can see it at work in the case of Panurge. In many ways his character is patterned after Satan's, but Rabelais's playful style lends its redeeming power to the rogue's “diableries” (1:304). Otherwise, how could Pantagruel, the good Christian hero, keep Satan in his company? We soon learn that, no matter how lecherous and roguish Panurge may be, he remains ‘au demourant le meilleur filz du monde” (1:301) [for the rest the best fellow in the world]. This is a radical departure indeed from strict moral exemplarity.

As several critics have pointed out, Panurge is “a sign of ambivalence” that cannot be reduced to a single dimension (Schwartz, J. 1990, 210, n. 63). To be sure, the sexual harassment scene is the most gratuitous and loathsome of his pranks. It offends our modern sensitivity to a greater extent than his cheating the priests or whipping the kids. The Parisian lady seems to be cast as an allegory of the suffering Christ. Yet her character also carries certain marks of ambivalence. In the first temptation, she tricks Panurge by making believe that she will call for help: “Et [Panurge] la vouloit embrasser, mais elle fist semblant de se mettre à la fenestre pour appeller les voisins à la force” (1:328, my emphasis) [And (Panurge) tried to embrace her, but she made as if to go to the window to call the neighbors for help (204)].¹⁹

“Faire semblant” [make as if] is an expression often used in the sixteenth-century to characterize female duplicitous attitudes toward sexual advances.²⁰ Similarly, in the third temptation, as Panurge tries to kiss the lady, she is not at all determined to call for help and makes sure to keep her voice down: “elle commença à s’escrier, toutesfoys non trop hault” (1:331) [she started screaming, however not too loud]. Her attitude thus involves some degree of complicity, which adds to the realism of the story but contradicts her portrayal as an innocent victim and Christlike figure (Schwartz, J. 1990, 39).

The utopian plenitude of a lofty ideal, like evangelism, cannot be neatly separated from the cornucopian movement of a proliferating fictional text (Cave). Many disruptive elements do interfere with the essentially positive valuation of a Christian humanist new order. To be sure, in Rabelais's creative language, abundance and excess are not easily distinguishable (Jeanneret 1991, 107). The French words très [much] and trop [too much] are amazingly close cognates, and the most seriously committed evangelical message is not exempt from excessive free play, because it must also be part of the book's regenerative process. One thing is sure: Pantagruel will love Panurge for ever. Paradoxically, a thoroughly undisciplined pattern of life must coexist, even though it be based on humiliation and degradation, with the luminous evangelical doctrine of caritas.

In more general terms, this complex episode could be read as a striking illustration of what modern critics have come to recognize as the Renaissance crisis of exemplarity. In the sixteenth century, the rhetoric of example went through a major epistemological change (Hampton; Lyons). Humanist education opened up a more mobile space into a rather sclerotic concept and, despite much early reluctance, marked a clear move away from older didactic certainties. Medieval imitation essentially posited fictional texts as extensions of a unique source of undifferentiated truth and an infinitely expandable master text, the Holy Scripture. By contrast, Renaissance imitative theory became essentially metaphoric (Greene). It posited the relationship to paradigmatic figures as strictly one of analogy. Rabelais's early fiction seems to partake of this new brand of epistemology. His characters can no longer bridge the human time and historical difference that separate them from their models. Panurge may be similar to Satan in some ways, but he is essentially worthy of Pantagruel's love. The same can be said in reverse of the Parisian lady who, although patterned after a Christlike figure, exhibits a radical departure from her holy model. Many humanist readers were undoubtedly familiar with the long literary tradition which, through Origen's influential commentary on The Song of Songs, had stressed woman's identity as the bride of Christ. The archetypal tale was that of the beautiful lady who refuses blandishments and threats and accepts physical degradation in the name of chastity and wifely fidelity. It was recast many times in medieval literature. The most famous and probably oldest exemplary text in the vernacular is The Sequence of Saint Eulalia (ca. 880). But there were numerous similar stories, like Wace's Life of Saint Margaret (ca. 1145?) and the Old Provençal La Chanson de sainte Foi. Obviously, Rabelais's Parisian lady both reminds us of the medieval women saints’ Lives and vigorously contrasts with that traditional source of exemplarity.

In his classic article strikingly entitled “L’Histoire comme exemple, l’exemple comme histoire” [in English: “History as Example, Example as (Hi)story], Karlheinz Stierle draws our attention to the problematic moral character of Boccaccio's novelle: “Le caractère exemplaire ne disparaît pas totalement,” he writes, “il devient susceptible du réflexion” (Stierle, 187). Much like Boccaccio, Rabelais is still in many ways a profoundly medieval author.²¹ Yet his works also usher a new process that may subtly make his readers reflect on and perhaps question the validity of exemplarity in Renaissance fiction.

Strangely enough, because our modern critical sensitivity is more finely attuned to problems of misogyny in our daily lives, we can better understand some of the semantic conflicts Rabelais so brilliantly built in his Pantagruel. At any rate, it is no longer possible to read Panurge's harassment scene as Wayne Booth and his young wife once did when, at an earlier stage, they were “transported with delighted laughter.” Like the older Booths, we are forced to “draw back and start thinking rather than laughing” (Booth, 68).²² In so doing, we may paradoxically become closer to Rabelais's own humanist readers who interpreted his early fiction for what he claimed it to be: a puzzling mixture of “beaulx textes d’évangilles en françoys” [fine Gospel texts in French] and “mille aultres petites joyeusetez toutes veritables” (1:385) [myriad other little jollities, all true (244)].

Notes

1. I wish to thank Howard Bloch and Florence Weinberg for their careful reading of this paper and many invaluable suggestions.

   To quote one of Edwin M. Duval's compelling statements from his The Design of Rabelais' Pantagruel: “Only to the degree that we are able to enter the community of intended readers by bringing to the Pantagruel the Christian humanist culture it presupposes in will we be successful in making sense of its design” (Duval 1991, xvii).

   Recontextualizing the literary text, however, always remains problematic. As Samuel Kinser remarks, “Context is the bane of criticism. Everyone uses it; no one knows how to encompass it. Context cannot be connoted or defined because its boundaries themselves depend on context” (Kinser, 265).

2. Like Bakhtin, Saulnier also insisted on Rabelais's down-to-earth humor in the vein of the Goliard tradition (1946, xxxv).

3. See, for instance, the studies of Peter Burke (quoted in Berrong, 14), Natalie Z. Davis, and Robert Muchambled.

4. Rabelais writes, “Quand je diz femme [dist Rondibilis], je diz un sexe tant fragil, tant variable, tant muable, tant inconstant et imperfaict, que Nature me semble (parlant en tout honneur et reverence) s’estre esguarée de ce bon sens par lequel elle avait créé et formé toutes choses, quand elle a basty la femme” (1:539) [When I say woman [said Rodibilis], I mean a sex so fragile, so variable, so mutable, so inconstant and imperfect, that Nature (speaking in all honor and reverence) seems to me to have strayed from that good sense by which she had created and formed all things, when she built woman (356)].

5. Quoted from Saulnier's edition of Pantagruel (Saulnier, 177). In subsequent editions, Rabelais replaced this expression with a less provocative one: “Ce sont belles besoignes” (1:385) [These are fine works (my translation)].

6. This episode can be found in chapters 21-24 of the definitive edition of the book. In the editio princeps, the episode is recorded in chapters 14-15 (Rabelais 1946, 115-32).

7. All translations are my own except when Frame's version is noted with a page reference.

8. Gargantua had used the same expression in the context of his praise for educated women: “Que diray je? Les femmes et les filles ont aspiré à ceste louange et manne celeste de bonne doctrine” (1:260; my emphasis) [What am I to say next? Women and girls have aspired to this praise and celestial manna of good learning].

9. In the passage quoted by Jesus from Deuteronomy, Moses, who has just revealed the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel, exhorts his people to keep God's covenant. Transposed in Rabelais's text, the exhortation to keep the Commandments may correspond to the lady's willingness to let Panurge keep her patenostres. When Panurge begs her to part with her rosary beads, she answers, “Tenez, et ne me tabustez plus” (1:329) [Here you are, and do not pester me any more].

10. The Vulgate text simply gives “Vade Satana” (Matt. 4:10) 955.

11. “Et ce dict, s’en fouit le grand pas, de peur des coups, lesquelz il craignoit naturellement” (1:331) [And, that said, he ran away at a good pace, for fear of blows, of which by nature he was afraid].

12. Several parallels between Panurge's seductive language and the narrator's captatio benevolentiae can be found especially in the first two books. The tempter's alluring display of precious objects in front of the lady's eyes is echoed in the implied author's praise of his own book in the Prologue: “Trouvez moy livre … qui ayt telles vertus, proprietés et prerogatives, et je poieray chopine de trippes. Non, Messieurs, non. Il est sans pair, incomparable et sans parragon” (1:217) [Find me a book … that has such virtues, properties, and prerogatives, and I shall treat you to a pint of tripes. No, gentlemen, no. It is peerless, incomparable, and beyond comparison].

13. “But,” said he, “play inversions with A creek rises for a handsome punt [A Beaumont le Vicomte].”

    “I couldn't do that,” said she.

    “That,” said he, “makes A prick rises for a handsome cunt [A beau con le vit monte].” (205)

14. Frame ingeniously translates: “so much that he tried to give her comeuppance to one of the great ladies” (203) and notes, “venir au dessus de means ‘get the better of, dominate,’ but literally ‘come over’ or ‘come on top of,’ as is clearly meant here” (note 2, 833).

15. See Jean Bouchet's expression: “Ilz ont le sacre en leur eglise,” quoted in Huguet under “sacre.”

    Emile Littré mentions examples ranging from Froissart: “Ceux de la cité de Reims doivent le sacre du roi,” to Marot: “De son bon gré ta gent bien disposée / Au jour très sainct de ton sacre courra” (Littré 6: 1807).

16. Bynum 1982, 110-69 and 1987, 246; Sturtz, 42 ff. Rabelais also knew that Christ's humanity was symbolized by the hen who, as a good mother seeks to protect her offspring: “quemadmodum gallina congregat pullos suos sub alas” (Matt. 23:37, my emphasis). In Pantagruel 32, the eponymous hero puts his tongue out to cover his troops from the rain “comme une geline faict ses poulletz” (1:378) [as a hen does her chickens (239, my emphasis)].

17. Psalm 21(22) “Petitio et laudatio Christi,” 21:8, 17, 21.

18. Such deciphering is, of course, made clear by the address on the letter sent to Pantagruel: “Au plus aymé des belles, et moins loyal des preux, P.N.T.G.R.L.” (1:337) [To the best beloved of the fair, and the least faithful of the valiant, P.N.T.G.R.L. (210)].

19. J. M. Cohen incorrectly translates: “And he would have embraced her, had she not struggled to get to the window” (Rabelais 1955, 240).

20. One can find numerous examples of this usage in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron.

21. See Cave's similar conclusions on Rabelais's use of the “old,” above.

22. See Freccero's paper on Booth's laugh above.