SOURCE: “Gargantua and Pantagruel,” in Language and Money in Rabelais, Peter Lang, 1996, pp. 23-57.

[In the following excerpt, Lavatori contends that characters in Gargantua and Pantagruel “deliberately infringe upon the principles of good communication and use language and money to influence others in non-communicative ways.”]

What strikes a reader most about patterns of communication in Rabelais is their repeated deviance. There is a constant disregard for the limits to which signs function effectively in communication and little evidence of a clear distinction between levels of meaning or significance. The problem of interpretation is thematic throughout the works and memorably coined in the metaphor of the “substantial marrow” of the prologue to Gargantua. There the reader is instructed to pass beyond the superficial meaning of the narrator's discourse, the literal meaning, as a dog would break through the shell of a bone to extract its marrow, a more sublime sense. However, the duplicity of signs is not only posited; it is problematized. The narrator adopts another pose soon after, establishing a program for reading which denounces interpretation through allegory. He adds,

Croiez-vous en vostre foy qu’oncques Homère, escrivent l’Illiade et Odysée, pensast ès allégories lesquelles de luy ont calfreté Plutarche, Heraclides Ponticq, Eustatie, Phornute, et ce que d’iceulx Politian a desrobé? Si le croiez: vous n’approchez ne de pieds ne de mains à mon opinion. …¹

By setting up and then destroying a pattern of communication, the narrator refuses to establish a consensus with the reader as to the function and meaning of the verbal signs they share. No stable reading of the passage is possible.

Jean Paris has identified another pattern of miscommunication typical of Rabelais's works: the practice of deliberately confusing two meanings of a word by taking proverbs literally.² The narrator and the other characters participate voluntarily in this type of deliberate confusion. In the debate through gestures between Panurge and Thaumaste,

Panurge mist le doigt indice de la destre dedans la bouche, le serrant bien fort avecques les muscles de la bouche. Puis le tiroit, et le tirant, faisoit un grand son, comme quand les petits garsons tirent d’un canon de sulz avecques belles rabbes, et le fist par neuf foys. Alors, Thaumaste s’escria: “Ha, Messieurs, le grand secret! Il y a mis la main jusques au coulde.” (II, 19, 297)

In this example, two meanings of “mettre la main jusques au coulde” are equally relevant: a literal one and a figurative sense meaning to commit oneself to a long and complicated explanation.³ The context of the dispute motivates the figurative meaning while the fact that it is a debate through gestic signs makes the original sense equally plausible. Neither meaning is directly annulled by the interaction.

This kind of ambiguity is especially notable in Rabelais where fixed forms of speech are employed. Chapter 11 of Gargantua, devoted to the giant's childhood, is typical of this practice. Gargantua “se mouschoyt à ses manches … retournoyt à ses moutons … mettoyt la charrette devant les beufz … saultoyt du coq à l’asne” (I, 11, 72-73). As Rigolot has indicated, in this chapter the proverb is surreptitiously inserted into a list of literal infractions of social norms. We do not understand the sentences “se mouschoyt à ses manches” and “saultoyt du coq à l’asne” in the same way according to a single standard of decoding. In this context, however, the proverb itself becomes strangely literal through “contagion.”⁴ Several systems of reference are relevant and the normal sense of the fixed formula is no longer secure. The reader cannot be sure when or if the figurative meaning is intended because several alternate codes of communication are possible and relevant.

In his study on “Logic and Conversation,” Grice defines the terms upon which good communication can be said to be grounded. He bases these terms upon a principle of cooperation. Grice states it as the maxim: “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.”⁵ The principle's maxims concern (1) quantity—in making the contribution no more or less than required (2) quality—in making the contributions true and genuine (3) relation—in making the contribution appropriate at each stage of the transaction and (4) manner—in making it clear what the contribution is, avoiding obscurity and ambiguity and in carrying it out in an orderly fashion and within a reasonable period of time. Grice's stated intention is to place talking in a general sphere of rational, purposive behavior. He sees that these maxims may have analogues in other transactions which are not speech exchanges as well.⁶

According to Grice, participants in communicative acts can fail to meet the requirements of a cooperative principle necessary for mutually directed activity for a variety of reasons. One can blatantly violate a maxim of good communication in order to generate implicature or one can violate the communicative principle unostentatiously and deliberately deceive the interlocutor. In other non-verbal exchanges, as in talk exchanges, the cooperative principle functions in excluding operations which are not suited to the acknowledged direction of a given exchange.⁷

Like Grice, Jurgen Habermas classifies social action according to whether or not it involves cooperation between two subjects.⁸ The distinction is essential to Habermas in that it constitutes for him the very definition of communication.⁹ Exchanges which deviate from this principle can be thought of as being designed to mislead. Habermas distinguishes between these two types of action with the aid of Austin's typology of the levels of acts accomplished in speaking. For Habermas, the illocutionary act refers to an original mode of language which may produce parasitic perlocutionary effects when it is embedded into a context of interaction. When speakers intend to produce a perlocutionary effect, it can be said that they use a speech act as a means to an end rather than for a communicative purpose. Speech acts are always self-identifying, according to Habermas. They manifest themselves to the hearer as commands, promises, greetings or otherwise in readily recognizable ways. However, the perlocutionary aims of speakers often remain hidden. In this sense, the instrumental use of a speech act can be seen as deceitful. In order to succeed in accomplishing a concealed perlocutionary goal, speakers must get the hearer to accept the manifest force of their speech act while hiding from the hearer their true aim in the interaction. Habermas concedes that certain perlocutionary effects appear fortuitously in any talk exchange. However, he affirms that in order to maintain the communicative nature of the exchange, speakers must disavow those effects as intended results. In this way, Habermas defines as communicative exchanges those linguistic interactions in which speakers pursue only illocutionary aims.¹⁰

However, Habermas's goal is not only to categorize linguistically mediated interaction. Through his typology, Habermas plans to provide a means for understanding all acts of communication. He states his goal as being “to grasp structural properties of processes of reaching understanding, from which we can derive general pragmatic presuppositions of communicative action.”¹¹ In this way, linguistic interaction can serve as a model for understanding other types of communicative and non-communicative exchanges.

In my study of Gargantua and Pantagruel, I aim to show that the characters of Rabelais's novels, like the narrator himself, deliberately infringe upon the principles of good communication and use language and money to influence others in non-communicative ways. The result of this ostentatious and deliberate infraction of the principle of cooperation is to attribute problems in communication to moral concerns, rather than explicitly identifying causes at the societal level.

Numerous examples of infractions of conversational logic can be found in Pantagruel in the chapters concerning the debate between Baysecul and Humevesne. The case was reputedly irresolvable. Hearing of the case and wishing to display his knowledge, Pantagruel decides to test his wits and settle the dispute himself. Upon learning that the litigants are both still alive, he insists that they be brought together in person to present their arguments out loud, each in his own voice (II, 10, 258-259). Pantagruel's position on legal procedures and documents is in many ways typical of that of sixteenth century humanist legal scholars who attempted to clarify documents by eliminating the medieval glosses which had obscured their literal meaning.¹² In his instructions to the litigants, Pantagruel attempts to clarify the pattern of communication.

As it is presented by the litigants, the reason for the dispute is almost entirely incomprehensible; yet Pantagruel insists on adhering to proper form. A semblance of order is maintained throughout in Pantagruel's concern that the participants speak in turn, as if there were an underlying logic to the dispute. Baisecul is allowed to speak first to present his complaint (II, 11, 260-261). Yet his argument proceeds without presenting any recognizable instance of wrongdoing. It is impossible to determine for what crime he is demanding restitution. He provides detailed information about the attendant circumstances involving a woman carrying eggs who seems to be important to the case. Yet, despite the assurance of relevance (the information is “à propos” according to Baisecul), the discourse seems to revolve around the presentation of insignificant facts. Baisecul mentions that there is sedition among the Balivernes, a rebellion of the Swiss and that Flemish painters use a kind of cloth mentioned to shoe cicadas. He pulls from a store of background information that is only potentially relevant to his case. Although he does later recall the focus of the argument, “ladicte bonne femme,” the information he next presents bears no explicit relation to the event he is attempting to describe. The argument proceeds in a “du coq à l’ane” manner as Baisecul arbitrarily arrives at the absurd proposition that eggs should be laid. It is not clear what event Baisecul is presenting. He violates Grice's maxim of manner through the obscurity and length of his discourse. In fact, after hearing both cases, the members of the audience comment that, “Nous l’avons [the dispute between the two lords] véritablement ouy, mais nous n’y avons entendu, au diable, la cause” (II, 13, 266). They have heard the case presented without understanding much of it. It is clear that for the fictional audience, as well as for the reader, the meaning of the argument is inaccessible.

Nevertheless, explicit references are made in the text to the apparent coherence of the discourse in Pantagruel's mind. He moderates the dispute addressing comments to the litigants to insure that proper form is maintained. At one point, he interrupts Baisecul's speech when the latter's tone becomes too inflamed with emotion. He advises: “Tout beau, mon amy, tout beau, parlez à traict et sans cholère. J’entends le cas, poursuyvez” (II, 11, 261) (my emphasis). Pantagruel's directions indirectly validate Baisecul's argument. In correcting only the manner in which the speech is enunciated, he posits its coherence: “j’entends le cas.” Similarly, when Humevesne attempts to interject at the point where Baisecul advocates the laying of eggs, Pantagruel reminds him of the proper format and further validates the proceedings.

Icy voulut interpeller et dire quelque chose le seigneur de Humevesne, dont luy dist Pantagruel:

“Et, ventre sainct Antoine, t’appartient-il de parler sans commandement? Je sue icy de haan pour entendre la procédure de vostre différent, et tu me viens encores tabuster? Paix, de par le diable, paix! Tu parleras ton sou quand cestuy-cy aura achevé. Poursuyvez, dist-il à Baisecul, et ne vous hastez point.”

(II, 11, 261-262)

Pantagruel's moderation of the dispute appears to assure that it adheres to the norms of an established form of communication. Furthermore, each litigant offers a declaration of sincerity and of completeness either explicitly or through compliance to the procedure Pantagruel proposes. When Humevesne has presented his case,

Lors dist Pantagruel:

“Mon amy, voulez-vous plus rien dire?”

Respondit Baisecul:

“Non, Monsieur, car je ay dict tout le tu autem, et n’en ay en rien varié, sur mon honneur.

—Vous doncques (dist Pantagruel), Monsieur de Humevesne, dictes ce que voudrez, et abréviez, sans rien toutesfoys laisser de ce que servira au propos.”

(II, 11, 263)

Each party is aware of the kind of conversational demand made upon him and consents to regulate his discourse accordingly. The resulting confusion for the reader and for those in attendance at the dispute cannot be attributed to a misunderstanding of the context of interaction. Humevesne's response to Baisecul's plea, in fact, begins with the affirmation that he has grasped the meaning of his opponent's argument. He concedes that:

combien que tout ce que a dit partie adverse soit de dumet bien vray quant à la lettre et histoire du factum,—toutefoys, Messieurs, la finesse, la tricherie, les petitz hanicrochemens sont cachez soubz le pot aux roses.

(II, 12, 263)

While stating that the facts have been presented in total, Humevesne protests that Baisecul's argument has somehow unfairly prejudiced the audience. In warning them, Humevesne presupposes that the superficial meaning of the speech is clear to all. As a result, two different “lifeworlds” are posited: that of the reader (and the spectators) and that of the litigants and Pantagruel, for whom the debate is comprehensible.¹³ The pattern continues as Humevesne begins to expose the apparent deceit he sees in the argument of his opponent. This appears in a form which is no clearer than what had preceded (II, 12, 263-264). Although he mentions the woman, “ladicte femme,” to establish semantic relevance, this information connects in no way to the scene Baisecul had evoked. This effect tends to negate the reference itself. For the reader, the discourse is only apparently pertinant. Yet for the ligitants, the conversational demand is clear, and the components of each argument are considered relevant. The exchange takes place in a fictional lifeworld whose norms conflict with those established in the world of the reader.

The pattern continues with Pantagruel's conclusion. The doctors and counselors in attendance all agree to confer upon him the authority to pronounce a binding judgement. They respond unanimously, “… nous vous prions una voce et supplions par grâce que vueilliez donner la sentence telle que verrez, et ex nunc prout et ex tunc nous l’avons aggréable et ratifions de nos pleins consentemens” (II, 13, 266). With this unconditional authority, Pantagruel is free to pronounce his own verdict. Yet his findings are as ambiguous as the testimony had been. He declares:

[E]n ce qu’il [Baisecul] met sus au défendeur qu’il fut rataconneur, tyrofageux et goildronneur de mommye, que n’a esté en brimbalant trouvé vray, comme bien l’a débastu ledict défendeur, la court le condemne en troys verrassées de caillebottes assimentées, prelorelitantées et gaudepisées comme est la coustume du pays, envers ledict défendeur, payables à la my d’oust, en may;

Mais ledict défendeur sera tenu de fournir de foin et d’estoupes à l’embouchement des chassetrapes gutterales, emburelucocquées de guilverdons, bien grabelez à rouelle.

Et amis, comme devant, sans despens, et pour cause.

(II, 13, 268-270)

The sentence Pantagruel offers is as undecipherable as it is impossible to carry out. The conditions of the sentence (to be effective at mid-August in May) rule out any possibility of its realization. In response to the non-conformity of the testimony, Pantagruel issues a non-verdict.¹⁴ He accepts his role while making his contribution non-conventional.

However, Pantagruel's judgement becomes appropriate and even laudable in its context. Normally, the type of ambiguity he employs would constitute an infraction of a norm of good communication. Berrendonner sees such violations as an offense to the sense of decorum implicit in any verbal act of communication. In his view, there are certain locutionary practices which norms of propriety prohibit, such as: injurious enunciations whose content designates an unfavorable quality of the person to whom they are addressed and enunciations which are ambiguous to the point that they are difficult to decipher. However, the value of an utterance in a given conversational exchange is not absolute. It depends not only on the institutional norms in force but also partly on the context of interaction in which it is situated. Therefore, an ordinarily inappropriate enunciation can become contextually appropriate if it is a response to an utterance which is itself in violation of the established norms. For example, it is generally considered permissible to answer an insult with an equally injurious remark.¹⁵ Thus, although in itself too ambiguous for good communication in ordinary circumstances, Pantagruel's pronouncement is contextually justified by the sequence of speeches which precede it. It should function as a means of criticizing the ambiguous nature of the previous exchange. However, all concerned are entirely satisfied with his settlement of the case: “laquelle sentence pronuncée, les deux parties départirent toutes deux contentes de l’arrest …” (II, 13, 270). The case is even portrayed as a landmark of sound judgement in legal history. Rabelais implicitly criticizes the legal procedures of his days. Lefebvre points out that the transition from medieval to authentic Roman law produced great confusion which is reflected in this unintelligible case. The litigants speak without a lawyer and rely on local proverbs to build their cases as was the medieval custom. Yet they frequently make attempts to conform to humanist style and add Latin formulas to give an air of authority and credibility to their arguments.¹⁶ The readers of Rabelais's times would have appreciated the irony in this treatment of sixteenth-century justice.

Yet Pantagruel justifies the type of aberrant interaction the litigants put into practice. Despite the institutional crisis, an agreement is reached through mutual consent to accept the attempt at communication as valid. The differences between the two lords are resolved through the litigants' confidence in Pantagruel's prudence and justice rather than through rationally motivated arguments. According to Duval, “Pantagruel does not judge the great controversy between Baisecul and Humevesne at all. He literally resolves it by absolving and reconciling the opposing antagonists.”¹⁷ This is a personalized form of justice whose basis is purely mutual consent and goodwill. Justice appears in the form of a philosopher-king rather than as an institution with fixed laws. In this context, it is not the intrinsic value of the language used which settles the case but rather the value it is assigned through mutual consent in the context provided.

The debate between Pantagruel and Thaumaste provides another instance of Rabelais's exploration of the modes in which signs make meaning. Having heard of the renowned wisdom of Pantagruel, Thaumaste arrives in Paris from England for the sole purpose of debating philosophy with the giant. However, the Englishman proposes a peculiar form of discussion.

[V]oicy la manière comment j’entends que nous disputerons. Je ne veulx disputer pro et contra, comme font ces sotz sophistes de ceste ville et de ailleurs; semblablement, je ne veulx disputer en la manière des académicques par déclamation, ny aussi par nombres, comme faisoit Pythagoras et comme voulut faire Picus Mirandula à Romme; mais je veulx disputer par signes seulement, sans parler, car les matières sont tant ardues que les parolles humaines ne seroyent suffisantes à les expliquer à mon plaisir.

(II, 18, 290-291)

In his proposition, Thaumaste evokes the theme of the inability of human speech to represent divine truths. In the early sixteenth century, a crisis was brewing over language's potential to represent reality. Many thinkers attributed the supposed loss in potency of language to the Biblical Fall and the experience of Babel described in Genesis. According to this view, in the beginning, the Divine Word was considered to have ontological status and God's original naming of things brought about their existence. Even Adam's denominations were thought to have enjoyed a direct relation to being, as if the name he attributed to an object communicated its essence. However, it was believed that the immediate connection of language to reality had been taken away from Adam's race as divine punishment for the attempts to construct the Tower of Babel. Sixteenth-century linguists regretted this assumed lost plenitude in language and saw that, as a result, there was no longer a guarantee that the signs used in human speech bore any relation to the true essence of things.¹⁸ They dreamed of recovering an ideal language where names would reveal the nature of the objects they represented. In this mode of communication, “ne se parlera plus par paraboles, mais par les choses mêmes.”¹⁹ Thaumaste follows this thinking in proposing his own ideal mode of communication. He posits the insufficiency of human speech and believes that gestic signs are more adequate. Pantagruel, in accepting the proposition, validates the view. He responds: “(je) loue grandement la manière d’arguer que as proposée, c’est assavoir par signes, sans parler; car, ce faisant, toy et moy nous entendrons” (II, 18, 291). They agree to abandon the scholastic form of disputation and to establish between themselves what they see as a more direct means of communication. Pantagruel's acceptance carries the presupposition that the means proposed are feasible in his lifeworld.

The debate rests on the premise that there are alternate modes of communication as complete as, and even more complete, than speech. The form the participants choose appears to work adequately for them. Panurge, who eventually replaces Pantagruel in the debate,

baissa contre terre l’une et l’aultre main; finablement les tint on mylieu, comme visant droict au nez de l’Angloys.

“Et si Mercure …” dist l’Angloys.

Là, Panurge interrompt, disant: “Vous avez parlé, masque!”

(II, 19, 295)

The gestic communication functions so well that Thaumaste is completely absorbed in Panurge's argument. The Englishman forgets the terms of the dispute and slips into ordinary speech. He mentions the god Mercury as if he were beginning to cite information which could potentially be damaging to Panurge's case. Panurge sees the verbal interjection as inappropriate because of the form in which it appears and not because of the irrelevance of the proposition it makes. Thaumaste's response is accepted as pertinent to Panurge's “discourse.” The reader is thus lead to believe that, through hand gestures, Panurge had produced a statement concerning mythical figures. In this manner, the validity of gestures as an effective means of reaching understanding is posited. The gestures the two participants exchange are to be taken as equivalent to speech acts.²⁰ In the special context of the debate, Thaumaste and Panurge appear to be able to create functional illocutionary acts through gestures.

The effects involved in the successful accomplishment of an illocutionary act are that it secures uptake, invites a response and takes effect.²¹ According to these criteria, Panurge's gesture is a valid illocutionary act. Since Thaumaste's interjection acknowledges the proposition Panurge profers, it is evident that it has secured uptake and invited a response. Although the means employed are non-conventional to the mind of the reader, an illocutionary act is apparently carried out in the life-world of the characters. They seem to interact in a realm outside of the standard norms of communication.

In fact, it is often impossible for the reader to determine which illocutionary acts have been accomplished. For example, Panurge makes a waving gesture understood by Thaumaste yet whose meaning is undecipherable if it is to be taken as relevant to the philosphical debate.

[Panurge] leva les mains et en feist tel signe. De la main gausche il joingnit l’ongle du doigt indice à l’ongle du poulse, faisant au meillieu de la distance comme une boucle, et de la main dextre serroit tous les doigts au poing, excepté le doigt indice, lequel il mettoit et tiroit souvent par entre les deux aultres susdictes de la main gausche. … Puis mettoit le poulce de la main gauche sus l’anglet de l’oeil gausche, estendant toute la main comme une aesle d’oyseau ou une pinne de poisson, et la meuvant bien mignonnement de czà et de là; autant en faisoit de la dextre sur l’anglet de l’oeil dextre. Thaumaste commencza paslir et trembler. …

(II, 19, 296)

By waving his fingers placed at the level of his eyes, Panurge makes a statement which in some way threatens Thaumaste. It would be evident that the sign was meant as a mockery if the premise of the debate were not to discuss philosophy. The content of the act is ambiguous. Strictly following the context of the debate, the reader is meant to see Panurge's gesture as putting forth a proposition which produces a perlocutionary effect. It frightens Thaumaste. However, there is no way available to interpret the sign as an illocutionary act which triggers the effect.²² By seeing the act as a non-locutionary means of intimidating, one can only negate the premise of the debate that philosophy can be discussed through gestures.²³ Therefore, the readers are forced to concede that the characters of Rabelais's novels are operating in a lifeworld unlike our own.

The members of the fictional audience present at the debate share the readers' inability to perceive the illocutionary acts which the opponents appear to produce, except where the gestures are conventional. Further in the debate,

[Thaumaste] mist le doigt indice de la dextre en pareille boucle de la senestre, mais il le mist par dessoubz non par dessus comme faisoit Panurge.

Adoncques Panurge … met encores le doigt indice de la dextre en la boucle de la gauche, le tirant et mettant souvent. Puis estendit le menton regardant intentement Thaumaste.

Le monde, qui n’entendoit rien à ces signes, entendit bien que en ce il demandoit sans mot dire à Thaumaste:

“Que voulez-vous dire là?”

(II, 19, 296)

The narrator makes reference to the obscurity of most of the signs exchanged. The audience comprehends only what can be grasped through understanding standard popular gestures. By repeating the same hand movement Panurge had made, which was seemingly obscene, Thaumaste is visibly establishing a kind of relevance to his response. Similarly, Panurge produces the same sign again in such a way that it is evident he is requesting clarification: after making the gesture, he extends his chin and looks at Thaumaste with an air of expectation. The doctors and counselors in attendance perceive the gesture as an illocutionary act—as a request for an explanation. What is clear to them is merely the conventional mechanism for attempting to re-establish communication, not the content of the propositions disputed. When the signals produced are standard or representational, the audience is able to generate meaning through inference or implicature.²⁴

Panurge's means of communicating with Thaumaste can be seen as deliberately obscure. He violates Grice's maxim of manner because his contribution is ambiguous; his gesture could be seen as obscene. However, the premise of the debate is precisely that gestures are a superior form of communication, ultimately producing a greater understanding between the participants in the exchange. The participants and spectators are expected to be able to interpret the signs produced as having meaning. Thus, in another instance, Panurge:

faisoyt son tel que font les ladres en Bretaigne avecques leur clicquettes, mieulx toutesfoys résonnant et plus harmonieux, et de la langue, contracte dedans la bouche, fredonnoyt joyeusement, toujours reguardant l’Angloys.

Les théologiens, médicins et chirugiens pensèrent que par ce signe il inféroyt l’Angloys estre ladre.

Les conseilliers, légistes et décrétistes pensoient que, ce faisant, il vouloyt conclurre quelque espèce de félicité humaine consister en estat de ladrye, comme jadys maintenoyt le Seigneur.

(II, 19, 295)

The spectators cannot know the intended meaning of the sign Panurge creates. Yet they can attempt to reconstruct its relevance to the debate, utilizing what they know to be norms of good communication. They assume that in producing signs Panurge is attempting to communicate something. Following Saint Augustine's analysis, they believe that conventional signs are created for the purpose of demonstrating a meaning. “Nor is there any other reason for signifying, or giving signs, except for bringing forth and transferring to another mind the action of the mind in the person who makes the sign.”²⁵ In other words, they believe Panurge is obeying Grice's cooperative principle. The first group of theologians and doctors believes that Panurge is inferring that Thaumaste is a leper. They consider Panurge's gesture to be mimetic. The second group generates a hypothesis from this interpretation and attempts to relate this inference to the thrust of the pretended argument. To them, Panurge's representation of leprosy is a disavowal of wordlyways. Their interpretation credits Panurge's act with a relevance to the topic proposed. In each case, the only meaning which can be extracted from Panurge's attempt at gestic debate is derived from what appear to be mimetic gestures. However, the greater part of the exchange is unintelligible to the observers.

At one point, even Thaumaste affirms his inability to follow the meaning of the signs. “Ha, j’entens, dist Thaumaste, mais quoy” (II, 19, 297)? The exclamation problematizes the notion of understanding. Thaumaste has the impression that he understands but cannot explain this understanding rationally. In other words, he expresses his desire to participate in a cooperative debate and his belief that Panurge does also; yet he cannot define the content of the communication. This makes clear the fact that there is no standard of reference in the debate. The gestures are taken alternately as mimetic signs whose pejorative meaning is clear and then as elements of a code sophisticated enough to convey philosophical matters. The reactions of the participants signal that some communication truly has taken place but very few of the signs produced can be deciphered by the audience. The observers can only make conjectures about the content of the debate while assuming that there is substance to it.

Nevertheless, the system of communication is ultimately validated by the satisfaction each participant acclaims in the knowledge he has attained through it. Thaumaste affirms that “il [Panurge] m’a ouvert le vray puys et abisme de encyclopédie, voire en une sorte que je ne pensoys trouver homme qui en sceust les premiers élémens seulement: c’est quand nous avons disputé par signes, sans dire mot ny demy” (II, 20, 298). However, Thaumaste then continues his evaluation of the experience and addresses a doubt remaining in the mind of the audience as to the authenticity of the communication he acclaims. He declares, “Mais à tant je rédigerai par escript ce que avons dict et résolu, affin que l’on ne pense que ce ayent esté mocqueries, et le feray imprimer à ce que chascun y apreigne comme je ay faict” (II, 20, pp. 298-299). Conceding that some might doubt the validity of this debate, Thaumaste assures the reader of its quality by indicating that the information conveyed through gestures in the debate can be presented in an orderly and socially validated fashion, in writing.²⁶ The narrator adds that such a book has since already been printed. He dismisses the reader's doubts with the following disclaimer:

Au regard de l’exposition des propositions mises par Thaumaste et significations des signes desquelz ils usèrent en disputant, je vous les exposeroys selon la relation d’entre eulx-mesmes, mais l’on m’a dict que Thaumaste en feist un grand livre, imprimé à Londres, auquel il déclaire tout sans rien laisser. Par ce, je m’en déporte pour le présent.

(II, 20, 299)

Toying with the reader's credibility, Rabelais opts out of having to reveal the substance and the code of the communication which the debaters employed. The private mode of communication of Thaumaste and Panurge remains inaccessible to the readers.

The code fails to achieve universal validity since there is no way of communicating the “truth” of the substance of the debate to the fictional audience, or eventually to the readers. This experience reflects the attempts of sixteenth-century linguists to overcome communicative barriers and their failure as well. It reveals the lack of a stable communicative code. Inevitably, the pretended communicative potential of the gestic signs is reduced to foolish mimetics and obscenity. Beyond this level, one has only the word of the narrator to rely on.

Rabelais applies this deflationary view of sophisticated signs to religious images through the character of Friar John. The monk deflates the mystic importance of religious language by instrumentalizing it. Thus he advises Gargantua to treat his insomnia through prayer, revealing:

“Je ne dors jamais bien à mon aise, sinon quand je suis au sermon ou quand je prie Dieu. Je vous supplie, [Gargantua] commençons, vous et moy, les sept pseaulmes pour veoir si tantost ne serez endormy.”

L’invention pleut très bien à Gargantua et, commenceant le premier pseaulme, sus le poinct de Beati quorum s’endormirent et l’un et l’aultre.

(I, 41, 163)

A perlocutionary effect is achieved through the reading of the psalms: it cures Gargantua's and Friar John's insomnia. In this way, prayers are reduced to purely phonic acts. This is made clear in the reference to the speaking of the Latin phrase Beati quorum which, as part of another linguistic system, would require a special decoding to become a valid rhetic act. Although we may suppose that each of the characters is familiar with Latin, the scene is presented as if the words were meaningless to them. The words of the prayer are uttered purely instrumentally, not as signs used intentionally for communication. This unusual use of speech acts—as physical exercise—is typical of Friar John. He systematically instrumentalizes signs.

In his view, words, independent of a context, have no magical or intrinsic meaning of their own. Addressing his comrades before the Picrocholine battle, he offers this encouragement:

Enfans, n’ayez ny paour ny doubt, je vous conduiray seurement. Dieu et sainct Benoict soient avecques nous! … Je ne crains rien fors l’artillerie. Toutefoys, je sçay quelque raison que m’a baillé le soubsecrétain de nostre abbaye, laquelle guarentist la personne de toutes bouches à feu; mais elle ne me profitera de rien, car je n’y adjouste poinct de foy. Toutefoys, mon baston de croix fera diables.

(I, 42, 165)

In this instance, Friar John denies the efficacy of prayers in and of themselves, apart from the meaning they carry for the true believer. This is to say that in his view, words are only worth the value the speaker assigns to them. He criticizes the belief in the potency of verbal signs to achieve lofty effects on their own. Rather, his use of linguistic and other signs emphasizes both their purely phonic or brute physical nature and an entirely subjective meaning attributed to them by the participants in the talk exchange. What he rejects, then, is the meaning words acquire conventionally through a code or system.

In other spheres as well, Friar John mocks the conventional or allegorical meaning of signs. He uses the Christian cross as a weapon and not as an object of religious devotion. When he encounters Tyravant on the battlefield, he strikes him with what is ordinarily used only as a symbol. “Le moyne avec son baston de croix luy donna entre col et collet sus l’os acromion si rudement qu’il l’estonna et feist perdre tout sens et mouvement, et tomba ès piedz du cheval” (I, 43, 168). The means Friar John uses to bring about changes in his world are conventional: language, a cross, etc., but his goals are attained independently of the significance attributed to them by tradition. He uses psalms, prayer books and crosses not for inspiration or communication but as sleeping aids, weapons and purgatives. He explains that the reading of his prayer book better prepares him to drink.

[T]out ainsi que les faulconniers, davant que paistre leurs oyseaux, les font tyrer quelque pied de poulle pour leurs purger le cerveau des phlegmes et pour les mettre en appétit, ainsi, prenant ce joyeux petit bréviaire au matin, je m’escure tout le poulmon, et me voy là prest à boyre.

(I, 43, 164)

The reciting of the prayers is presented not as an act of devotion, nor even as an act of communication, but as a purely phonic act designed to clear the throat for drinking. The desired result is achieved regardless of the conventional illocutionary force of the utterance.²⁷ This situation reflects the crisis in the institution of language and in traditional modes of communication in the sixteenth century. In the absence of stable norms, the characters appear free to make use of signs in whatever ways they choose.

Panurge in particular makes ample use of parasitical effects of conversation. One of his tricks is to praise the fabric of the clothes of the ladies he meets, while actually soiling them with the touch of his greasy fingers. Having first dipped his fingers in a flask of oil, Panurge manipulates the fabric of his interlocutor's attire specifically in order to ruin it: “en gressoit et guastoit tous les plus beaulx endroicts soubz le semblant de les toucher et dire: ‘Voicy du bon drap, voicy bon satin, bon tafetas, Madame’” (II, 16, 283). His act of destruction actually passes for praise. He misleadlingly engages his interlocutors in polite conversation only in order to distract them:

quand il [Panurge] se trouvoit en compaignie de quelques bonnes dames, il leur mettoit sus le propos de lingerie et leur mettoit la main au sein, demandant: ‘Et cest ouvraige, est-il de Flandre, ou de Haynault?’ Et puis tiroit son mouschenez [which he kept in a bag of sneezing powder], disant: ‘Tenez, tenez, voyez-en cy de l’ouvraige; elle est de Foutignan ou de Foutarabie”, et le secouoit bien fort à leur nez, et les faisoit esternuer quatre heures sans repos.

(II, 16, 284)

Panurge directs the conversation to the topic of cloth as the cooperative goal of the exchange. However, the thematic content of the talk exchange is, in fact, irrelevant to Panurge's purpose. Instead, the act of talking is a diversion. For Panurge, conversation can be used instrumentally to further success-oriented action while he appears to act according to the cooperative principle.

Rabelais's characters also manipulate the parasitical effects of economic exchanges. In his seminal work, Mauss coined the term “potlach” for the practice of using generosity used instrumentally as a means of creating a ruinous obligation to reciprocate on the part of the recipient.²⁸ Daniel Ménager has identified the use of this principle in Grandgousier's excessive generosity toward the conquered potentate, Alpharbal, in Chapter 50 of Gargantua. Rather than exacting punishment upon his former enemy, Grandousier chooses to lodge him at his palace and sends him home bearing gifts, “chargé de dons, chargé de grâces, chargé de toutes offices d’amytié” (I, 50, 184). Grandgousier's generosity is repeatedly presented as a burden to Alpharbal. As a result, Alpharbal's subjects become the tributaries or even the slaves of Grandgousier. According to Ménager, “par l’exercice d’une générosité excessive et ‘déplacée’ il [Grandgousier] contraint à une reconnaissance éternelle et ruineuse ce roi barbare.”²⁹ What Grandgousier hopes to have recognized as a purely charitable act is really a concealed attempt to achieve a success-oriented goal.

Panurge similarly manipulates economic exchanges. He relates that he once found himself in the hands of Turkish captors; he was tied to a spit and prepared for roasting. While his guard was sleeping, Panurge managed to pull a burning ember from the flames to set his captor and the chief's house ablaze. Upon discovering the fire, the master of the house immediately executes Panurge's guard and attempts suicide out of utter despair. However, the spike with which he tries to pierce his own heart proves insufficient. Panurge offers his assistance. The Turk accepts Panurge's offer as a service and begs to be killed. In return, he pledges diamonds, rubies and gold. “‘Ha, mon amy (dist-il), je t’en prie! et, ce faisant, je te donne ma bougette. Tien, voy-la là. Il y a six cens seraphz dedans et quelques dyamans et rubiz en perfection’” (II, 14, 273). In this highly unusual scene, the verbal and economic exchanges which occur are incongruous with the normative significance of the context. Panurge's offer is presented and considered as a promise. However, by definition, a promise must be an act the hearer wants the speaker to perform.³⁰ In this case, Panurge is able to momentarily satisfy the conditions for a legitimate promise. He manipulates the context until what would be perceived as a threat functions legitimately as a promise. Panurge can thus promise to kill the Turk. In typically carnivalesque style, the trickster takes pleasure in confusing an act of aggression and an act of charity.³¹

The changing of money also gives him an opportunity to accomplish two separate acts under the guise of operating only on acknowledged principles. While actually stealing money from a money changer, Panurge gives the impression that he is purely exchanging money.

quand il changeoit un teston ou quelque aultre pièce, le changeur eust esté plus fin que Maistre Mousche si Panurge n’eust faict esvanouyr à chascune foys cinq ou six grands blancs, visiblement, apertement, manifestement, sans faire lésion ne blessure aulcune, dont le changeur n’en eust senty que le vent.

(II, 16, 284)

The narrator presents Panurge's manipulation of the exchange as a mysterious event, as if Panurge had made the coins vanish through magic. This would seem to be the inevitable conclusion if Panurge had conducted the exchange overtly and in full view of the money-changer without the latter having detected any impropriety. On one level, the passage refers to Panurge's sleight of hand. However, there was another way of stealing money without appearing to do so: through a manipulation of the terms of exchange. De Malestroict discussed the possibilities of deception through credit, inflation, deflation and exchange in his “Paradoxes.” He posited that through exchange and inflation “il y a beaucoup à perdre sur un escu, ou autre monnoye d’or & d’argent, encores qu’on la mette pour mesme pris qu’on la reçoit.”³² Rabelais's text is reminiscent of this type of exchange. Panurge is as skillful as the money changers who profited from confusion over rates and values and secretly extracted money from their clients. Like them, he pretends to exchange currencies while his concealed goal is theft. In Rabelais's presentation of Panurge's transactions, emphasis is placed on the individual's moral responsibility. Like the money lender in popular and religious tradition, Panurge is seen as evil and diabolical. Yet the circulation of notes of credit cannot be considered immoral unless the responsibility for the transaction can be assigned to an immoral individual. Rabelais's text participates in such an individualization and personalization of the mechanisms of exchange. The implicit condemnation of Panurge reflects French society's concerns about the morality of credit.

Panurge not only makes money disappear, he also creates signs of wealth. Through another paradoxical procedure, he accumulates wealth while maintaining the appearance of giving alms to the Church. The narrator relates:

[Nous] nous transportasmes à Nostre Dame, à Sainct Jean, à Sainct Antoine, et ainsi des aultres églises ou estoit bancque de pardons. De ma part je n’en gaignoys plus; mais luy [Panurge], à tous les troncz il baisoit les relicques et à chascun donnoit. Brief, quand nous fusmes de retour, il me mena boire au cabaret du Chasteau et me monstra dix ou douze de ses bougettes pleines d’argent. A quoy je me seignay, faisant la croix et disant: ‘Dont avez-vous recouvert d’argent en si peu de temps?’

(II, 17, 285-286)

The narrator crosses himself, sensing heresy or a diabolical influence in Panurge's ability to accumulate money while having apparently only donated it. He believes Panurge has either damned himself in stealing from the Church or in illicitly creating money out of nothing. Panurge settles the question by confessing that his act of donation was a pure pretext and a deception. He admits:

en leur [to the sellers of pardons] baillant le premier denier … je le mis si souplement que il sembla que feust un grand blanc; ainsi d’une main je prins douze deniers, voyre bien douze liards ou doubles pour le moins, et de l’aultre troys ou quatre douzains: et ainsi par toutes les églises où nous avons esté.

(II, 17, 286)

Although the donation is momentarily real, its effect is cancelled out by the context of the more important, yet concealed, act of aggression it permits. Despite the mutually acknowledged and conventional force attributed to the exchange, Panurge has really taken, not given. Like Panurge's conversations with the ladies of Paris, his economic exchanges with the sellers of pardons are mere pretexts. They are acts used instrumentally to further the success-oriented goals he conceals.

Nevertheless, Panurge construes his action as an appropriate response to an invitation from a seller of pardons. At the request of the narrator who poses the question of the morality of Panurge's behavior, the latter explains:

les pardonnaires me le [money] donnent, quand ilz me disent en présentant les relicques à baiser: Centuplum accipies, que pour un denier j’en prene cent: car accipies est dict selon la manière des Hébreux, qui usent du futur en lieu de l’impératif, comme vous avez en la loy: Diliges Dominum et dilige. Ainsi quand la pardonnigère me dict: Centuplum accipies, il veult dire: Centuplum accipe, et ainsi l’expose Rabi Kimy et Rabi Aben Ezra, et tous les Massoretz, et ibi Bartolus. Dadvantaige, le pape Sixte me donna quinze cens livres de rente sur son dommaine et thésor ecclésiasticque pour luy avoir guéry une bosse chancreuse qui tant le tormentoit qu’il en cuida devenir boyteux toute sa vie. Ainsi je me paye par mes mains, car il n’est tel, sur ledict thésor ecclésiasticque.

(II, 17, 286)

Through his interpretation, Panurge changes the illocutionary force of the pardoner's utterance. He makes an imperative or direction out of a prediction. Habermas specifies: “With a prediction the speaker commits himself to the truth of a statement, whereas with a direction it is a claim to put forward imperative requests that is made.”³³ Panurge changes “You will receive” to “take.” As as a prediction, the pardoners’ claim in some way obliges them to offer money, in Panurge's view. The prediction they intend to make commits them to the proposition that Panurge will enjoy a return of a hundredfold on his donation. Panurge makes his action appear consistent with the Gospel in such a way that justifying his action becomes equivalent to affirming a Christian faith. Indeed, it is difficult not to see that the truth of “centuplum accipies” cannot be affirmed while denying the meaning of “centuplum accipe.” Therefore, if Panurge is not allowed to take the money, it is the validity of the Gospel that is put to question along with the morality of Panurge's behavior. Panurge's interpretation of the pardoner's words is only as abusive as the promise “centuplum accipies.” In this way, Panurge relates his theft to a dubious normative context; he justifies himself by implicating medieval authorities to support his interpretation. In this way, he distances himself from moral responsibility for the act.³⁴ Furthermore, he evokes the principle of reciprocity in believing that one inappropriate interaction justifies another. To this end he recalls a service he once rendered to Pope Sixtus for which he was promised a reward. In this context, Panurge can be seen to merely carry out the pope's promise to pay him duly. In each case, Panurge evokes a relationship which is as or more binding than the simple validity claim he believes the pardoner is making. Through the extension of these contexts, Panurge seeks to have his taking of money recognized as a valid response.

For Panurge, an economic act is often merely the pretext for another type of interaction. In this way, he offers money to pages only to be repaid in laughter. He explains:

Cependent que ces paiges bancquetoient, je garde leurs mulles et couppe à quelc’une l’estrivière du cousté du montouoir, en sorte qu’elle ne tient que à un fillet. Quand le gros enflé de Conseillier, ou aultre, a prins son bransle pour monter sus, ilz tombent tous platz comme porcz devant tout le monde, et aprestent à rire pour plus de cent francs. Mais je me rys encore dadvantage, c’est que, eulx arrivez au logis, ilz font fouetter Monsieur du paige comme seigle vert. Par ainsi, je ne plains poinct ce que m’as [sic] cousté à les bancqueter.

(II, 17, 288-289) [my emphasis]

Panurge pays to banquet local pages. Yet while they are eating, he cuts the stirrups of their mules so that the owners (the pages' masters) fall flat on the ground when they attempt to mount them. He is first amused by the master's consequent disgrace and then by the beatings the pages receive because of it. Thus Panurge inscribes the circulation of money into non-economic contexts. His gift to the pages is instrumentalized, goal-oriented behavior. Although recognized as a pure gift, the donation is ultimately repaid. Panurge is paid back in the pleasure he takes in the pages' beatings. He uses money as an instrument of power. Significantly, when he is asked where most of the money he gained from the pardoners has gone, Panurge answers: “‘[d]ont ilz [the florins] estoyent venuz … ils ne feirent seulement que changer maistre’” (II, 17, 286) [my emphasis]. The coins returned to where they had come, they only changed masters. In Panurge's view, whoever holds money is its “master.” He personifies currency as a servant which can serve one master and then another. Money is the univeral equivalent through which relations of superiority and subordination can be expressed in infinite series of combinations. Although the institution of money de-personalizes interactions, Rabelais's texts portray monetary transactions as operations made by one person through another. Through Panurge's donation, the feasting pages serve his ends temporarily; Panurge becomes a master by right of the money he spends. In his view, the circulation of money and economic exchange are not divorced from personal relations of service or exchange. He refuses to reduce economic exchanges to the recognized goal of payment. In fact, it is significant that he confuses donation with payment. Donation implies an affective exchange while payment is purely rationally and objectively motivated. Thus the affective exchange is the model for all exchanges in Panurge's view.

Thus he uses the circulation of money to create relations between people. He immediately returns the money he had stolen from the pardoners into circulation, refusing to accumulate personal wealth for his personal benefit. Of the florins he gained, Panurge relates:

[J]’en emploiay bien troys mille à marier, non les jeunes filles, car elles ne trouvent que trop marys, mais grandes vieilles sempiterneuses qui n’avoyent dentz en gueulle, considérant: “Ces bonnes femmes icy ont très bien employé leur temps en jeunesse, et ont joue du serrecropière à cul levé à tous venans jusques à ce que on n’en a plus voulu; et, par Dieu, je les feray saccader encores une foys devant qu’elles meurent! … d’autant qu’elles estoyent plus horribles et exécrables, d’autant il leur [to the men he pays] failloyt donner dadvantage; autrement le diable ne les eust voulu biscoter.

(II, 17, 286-287)

Panurge attempts to repay a collective, yet not impersonal, debt to the women who served his gender in their youth. He reintroduces the stolen money into circulation in the form of prostitution. In essence, he seeks to justify his theft by showing that it allows him to perform charitable acts. In so doing, he enacts an infringement of a maxim of the moral code of his age. In his treaty on money, Oresme specifically rejects the notion that a prince can justify dishonest and self-interested economic practices with the excuse that they serve the common good. Oresme affirms:

[q]uelconque chose, dit Aristote, que le Prince face ou préjudice ou dommaige de la communaulté est injustice et fait tyrannique et non pas réal, et s’il disoit, comme soullent les Tyrans mentir, qu’il convertit iceluy gaing [from the alteration of coins] en l’utitlité publique, il n’est à croire à luy ne à son seul dit, car par ceste mesme raison, il me pourroit oster ma robbe, ou autre chose, et dire qu’il auroit mestier ou besoing d’icelle, pour le commun proffit; car, selon ce que dit l’Apostre, il n’est licite de mal faire affin que bien en adviengne. Ainsi donc, par ceste raison, nulle chose ne se doit laidement oster d’aucun, pour icelle faindre despendre en usaige pitoyable et ausmones.³⁵ [my emphasis].

Contrary to the thought of his relative contemporary, Panurge does believe the end justifies the means. His theft appears as one element in a circuit of exchange designed to benefit the community of prostitutes.

Panurge uses money for social purposes and as a means of unifying the isolated elements of the universe. In this way, debt and love are closely related. In reference to Panurge's praise of debts, Henri Lefèbvre explains that according to this view “la circulation de l’argent établira le règne de l’amour car elle institute une sorte de mariage entre les parties contractantes.”³⁶ The idea is a perversion of the Protestant ethic. In Calvinist doctrine, commerce is considered part of the interdependence of God's creatures and its success, a sign of His favor. The mutual exchange of goods was seen as a concrete image of this universal solidarity.³⁷ In this sense, then, Panurge is a Calvinist because his use of money shows the interdependence of isolated individuals and heterogenous categories of experience and creates relations between them. However, the kinds of exchanges he creates would have been considered illicit. Oresme specifically linked the practice of prostitution to parasitical monetary practices:

Aucunesfoiz, affin que pis n’en aviengne et pour éviter scandalle, on permect en la communaulté aucunes choses inhonnestes et mauvaises, si comme, bordeaulx publiques. Aucunesfoiz aussi, pour aucunes necessitez et opportunitez, on permect aucunes négociations villes, si comme est l’art de changer, et encores pire, si comme usure; mais de telle mutacion de monnoie pour y prandre gaing, il n’appert aucune chose du monde nécessaire, ou autre, pour quoy le mauvais gaing se puisse ou doive permectre. …³⁸

Oresme conceives of prostitution, credit and changing money as vile carryings on but concedes that they may be potentially beneficial or necessary to the community. In the Tiers Livre, Panurge defends his use of credit just as he promotes prostitution in Pantagruel. He encourages the selling of women and of money because in his view it stimulates the circulation of goods and services. More importantly, Panurge's use of money is typified by his willingness to sacrifice accumulated wealth for the good of the principle of social interaction. Panurge acts against capitalist principles in not making rational use of his gains and instead turns his efforts into means of promoting the “wellbeing” of the community. His use of the means of economic exchange is characteristic of a pre-capitalist mentality: he uses wealth for non-economic gain and refuses to profit from it individually.

Yet in other instances, he applies a capitalist concept of money to his dealings in money. This occurs when he meets the lady of Paris and attempts to court her. Offering gifts of precious stones, Panurge intentionally misrepresents his financial status, promising the woman:

“un beau chapellet de fines esmerauldes, marchées de ambre gris coscoté 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 présent, car j’en ay du content.” Et ce disoit, faisant sonner ses gettons comme si ce feussent escutz au soleil. … “Voulez-vous chaisnes, doreures, templettes, bagues? Il ne fault que dire ouy. Jusques à cinquante mille ducatz ce ne m’est rien cela.” Par la vertus desquelles parolles il luy faisoit venir l’eaue à la bouche. …

(II, 21, 305) [my emphasis]

Panurge attempts to persuade the lady of his great worth through a show of signs. He sounds the coins as if they were valuable attempting to mark his wealth. Yet it is purely a sign of means; the lady never sees the money Panurge implies he has, but only thinks she hears it jingling in his pockets. The sign is without real substance because he merely possesses worthless tokens, not valuable coins. In a sense, Panurge is a counterfeiter. He fabricates the appearance of ecus, specifically their sound in his pockets. For Panurge's purposes, it is only important that the lady recognize the signs as he hopes. He does not seek to exchange the money but only to imply its presence. To be effective, his promises need only be accepted at face value momentarily. His seduction succeeds in part “par la vertus desquelles parolles” which initially entice the woman who “waters at the mouth.” Ultimately, however, Panurge fails to engage the lady in an exchange of her affection for the promised jewels and stones. She wants nothing from him. Panurge replies: “‘Par Dieu … si veulx bien moy de vous; mais c’est chose qui ne vous coustera rien, et n’en aurez rien moins’” (II, 21, 305). In abandoning the idea of exchange, Panurge attempts to elicit a donation of love by suggesting to his hoped-for lover that one neither loses nor gains anything in giving one's affection. According to his argument, because love is free and thus outside the realm of economics, there is no reason why she should refuse him, since she would lose nothing. When she once again rejects him, he conceives of a cruel trick to avenge himself.³⁹ He presents her with a poem in which he reminds her of her cold responses to his admiration. Yet, the poem is once again a mere pretext. In giving the paper to the woman, Panurge is able to soil her garments with a special powder designed to attract dogs. Eventually she is forced to run home and hide from a pack of neighborhood dogs which pursues her. Although Panurge pretends to act communicatively in addressing the written response to the lady, the relating of the message is only a means of achieving a success-oriented goal, just as he had flaunted his money as a means of achieving her seduction.

In Rabelais's texts, signs of wealth can also enter into linguistic circuits of exchange. In Honfleur, Pantagruel receives a message from a Parisian lady. It is a letter in which a diamond ring is enclosed. Since there appears to be no inscription on the page, Pantagruel is perplexed by the case and calls on Panurge for assistance. Panurge is sure that the letter is, in fact, inscribed but not in ink. He holds it up to the fire, dips it in water, passes it under a candle, rubs it with oil, milk, ashes, vinegar and grease in attempting to make supposedly hidden letters visible. However, his efforts prove useless. Finally, upon a closer examination of the ring, he discovers an inscription in Hebrew: LAMAH HAZABTHANI. With a translation from the Hebrew, Panurge solves the riddle. He explains: “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’” (II, 24, 311)? When Pantagruel remembers he had left Paris without properly taking leave of the lady, the meaning of the message becomes clear. The diamond in the envelope is intended not as a sign of wealth nor as a means of exchange but purely for the phonic value of its linguistic representation “diamant.” It sounds like “dis, amant,” or “do tell, lover,” in French. Panurge shows his awareness of the variety of means of signification and interpretation through his efforts to extract meaning from the blank page. It is not a single code which yields the meaning of the message. Panurge relies on translation and puzzle dechiphering. The message's purpose can only be determined through the interaction of all these codes. The diamond's most apparent function as a gift becomes irrelevant in this context. In this case, it is wealth that is used instrumentally to further linguistic goals.

The final chapters of Pantagruel involve a voyage to a world which is entirely lingual, inside Pantagruel's mouth. As Pantagruel and his army enter the territory of Dipsodie, they encounter a drenching downpour. Pantagruel extends his tongue and protects the army from the rain with it as the narrator relates what he sees in the giant's mouth. He describes mountains, which he supposes to be the giant's teeth, forests, villages and finally villagers. He meets a peasant planting cabbage, who tells him that he earns his living selling his produce at the market. The narrator deems the region another “nouveau monde,” making reference to the contemporary discovery and exploration of the American continent (II, 32, 345). In his famous study, Eric Auerbach points out that the world in Pantagruel's mouth is in many ways a representation of sixteenth-century France. He observes, however, that in a way typical of Rabelais, the universe inside Pantagruel is not presented from a single perspective. It is both totally unfamiliar to Panurge and yet very much like most of France during the Renaissance. These categories of experience alternate and are entwined in the narration.⁴⁰ Thus, the narrator discovers he can earn a living in a way unimaginable in the real France of the sixteenth century. He relates that:

trouvay une petite bourgade à la dévallée (j’ay oublié son nom), où je feiz encore meilleure chère que jamais, et gaignay quelque peu d’argent pour vivre. sçavez-vous comment? A dormir: car l’on loue les gens à journée pour dormir et gaignent cinq et six solz par jour.

(II, 32, 346)

The passage is anticipatory of the Chiquanous episode in the Fourth Book and represents a carnivalesque never-never land where unimaginable exchanges take place, where one is payed for resting rather than for working. The episode presents various irrational exchanges. In this land, the relationship between employer and employee expressed through payment is not a rational trade of money for services but something idiosyncratic and non-capitalist. Significantly, the land represented in the episode is both a mirror image and the opposite of the real world of sixteenth-century France. Although the narrator is payed for sleeping, in a totally unusual reversal of reality, the mere fact that he is paid monetarily is a reflection of the budding capitalist era already present in France.

The pattern continues in Epistemon's visit to the Underworld. In many aspects, it resembles the society of early France as well. Epistemon reports that he witnessed a conversation between François Villon and Xerxes I while in the netherworld. Xerxes is selling mustard when Villon arrives and reproaches him for the high price he is asking. Villon remarks: “‘Tes fièvres quartaines, villain! La blanchée n’en vault qu’un pinard, et tu nous surfaictz icy les vivres’” (II, 30, 339)? His remark reflects a concern that many of Rabelais's contemporaries would have had over the inflation in prices during the sixteenth century. Yet the Underworld also appears as pure fantasy or an inverted image of the real world of Rabelais's contemporaries. Epistemon sees a Persian prince begging for deniers from the Greek stoic philosopher, Epictetus (II, 30, 338). The reference accentuates the otherworldiness of the scene in that deniers could not be begged; they had been a purely imaginary money for some time before Rabelais. The term did not refer to a real coin in circulation.⁴¹ The Underworld in this portrait participates in the realms of fantasy and the carnival. It not only flaunts its unreality; it reverses the hierarchy existing in the real world and redresses its inequalities. All those who during their life enjoyed privilege, rank and wealth are reduced to vile servants in the next world: “ilz gaignoient pour lors leur vie à vilz et salles mestiers” (II, 31, 342). Usurers are seen searching street gutters for rusty pins and nails which they sell to earn their miserable living, going weeks without food (II, 30, 339-340). This is apparently compensation for the the easy profits they once enjoyed from lending on credit. Pathelin contributes to the uncrowning of a pope. He sees Pope Jules selling meat pies and asks how much a dozen would be. “‘Troys blancs, dist le Pape.—Mais (dist Pathelin) troys coups de barre! Baille icy, villain, baille, et en va querir d’aultres!’ Le pauvre pape alloit pleurant” (II, 30, 338-339). Instead of being rewarded, Pope Jules is doubly pained by being repaid for the loss of his merchandise with blows. Pathelin establishes an equivalence between three “blancs” and three blows as if they were interchangeable means of payment. On the contrary, Lemaire de Belges is rewarded for his sober living since he serves as a pope in the Underworld. Epistemon hears him crying: “‘Guaignez les pardons, coquins, guaignez; ilz sont à bon marché. Je vous absoulz de pain et de souppe, et vous dispense de ne valoir jamais rien’” (II, 30, 339).Lemaire abuses the term “absolve” as Pathelin abuses the act of payment. For a price, Lemaire offers to deprive his clients of food, water and livelihood. By definition, an absolution can only be appropriate when it sets one free from an unpleasant or undesired obligation. Lemaire uses the term infelicitously as Pathelin abuses the term of payment. Yet, in the upside-down world Epistemon presents, such abuses are appropriate and consistent with the carnival mode which reigns. The concept of the carnival world is in itself indicative of a pre-capitalist mentality. Rather than seeking to redress inequalities in rational ways in the material world, it provides an imaginary escape from the pressures and realities of that world. Thus, Rabelais's characters overrule the order of accepted exchanges and realize patterns of deception and idiosyncracy.

Through the manipulation of contexts, Panurge enacts the carnival principle and perverts the traditional relationship between an act and its consequences and thus creates new relations. He instrumentalizes language, money and signs in general to further success-oriented goals often unrelated to the content or acknowledged force they traditionally hold. Other characters from Pantagruel down to Friar John similarly apply these principles. These manipulations are made possible by, and reflect the instability of, social institutions of the Renaissance. Inflation, the confusion in the monetary system and the competition among linguistic and legal systems all contributed to the changing nature of sixteenth-century French society. In the absence of rigidly fixed, immutable norms, Rabelais's characters experiment with means of signification and circuits of exchange. Thus according to Auerbach, “Rabelais's entire effort is directed toward playing with things and with the multiplicity of their possible aspects; upon tempting the reader out of his customary and definite way of regarding things, by showing him phenomena in utter confusion; upon tempting him out into the great ocean of the world, in which he can swim freely, though it be at his own peril.”⁴² Rabelais's novels explore, at a pre-theoretical level, the basis for exchange and its abuses in sixteenth-century France. Yet many of the abuses seen are attributed to individual misappropriations and misapplications rather than to faults within the system. In this way, Rabelais's texts present individual will and intelligence (or morality) as the basis for progress and abuse. This preoccupation with the individual is indicative of a Renaissance, humanist, capitalist society. Rabelais does not directly attribute problems to the society at large but rather presents individuals, or even groups of individuals such as the theologians of the Sorbonne, as originating all the beneficial and negative developments in his world. Thus, although Rabelais promotes such progressive ideas for his period as credit, Reform theology, and humanism, his inability to conceive of his society in terms other than those of good and bad individuals gives evidence of his period's epistemological limitations. Rabelais describes certain innovations in his society, yet he is unable to attribute those innovations and changes to impersonal societal shifts which transcend individuals.

Notes

1. François Rabelais, Gargantua in Rabelais: Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Guy Demerson (Paris: Seuil, 1973), pp. 38-40. All further citations from the works of Rabelais were taken from this edition and will be listed parenthetically in the text.

2. Jean Paris, Rabelais au futur (Paris: Seuil, 1970), pp. 81-82.

3. Guy Demerson, ed., Rabelais: Oeuvres Complètes, p. 297, n. 12.

4. François Rigolot, “Sémiotique de la sentence et du proverbe chez Rabelais.” Etudes Rabelaisiennes, 14 (1977), 283.

5. H. P. Grice, “Logic and Conversation,” Syntax and Semantics, 3, (1975), 41-58.

6. Grice, pp. 46-47.

7. H. P. Grice, “Logic and Conversation,” Syntax and Semantics, 3 (1975), 45-50.

8. “Social actions can be distinguished according to whether the participants adopt either a success-oriented attitude or one oriented to reaching understanding.” Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981), I, 286.

9. “I shall speak of communicative action wherever the actions of the agents involved are coordinated not through egocentric calculations of success but through acts of reaching understanding.” Habermas, pp. 285-286.

10. Habermas, pp. 288-295.

11. Habermas, p. 286.

12. Jean Plattard, The Life of François Rabelais, trans. Louis P. Roche (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931), p. 109.

13. “Subjects acting communicatively always come to an understanding in the horizon of a lifeworld. Their lifeworld is formed from more or less diffuse, always unproblematic, background convictions. This lifeworld background serves as a source of situation definitions that are presupposed by the participants as unproblematic. … The world-concepts and the corresponding validity claims provide the formal scaffolding with which those acting communicatively order problematic contexts of situations, that is, those requiring agreement, in their lifeworld which is presupposed as unproblematic.” Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981), p. 70.

14. Berrendonner posits in this way a law of discourse: “Si une énonciation inconvenante E remplit une fonction interactive par rapport à une énonciation antérieure X, elle-même inconvenante, alors, E doit être considérée comme convenante.” Alain Berrendonner, Eléments de pragmatique linguistique (Paris: Minuit, 1981), pp. 231-233.

15. See above, n. 14.

16. Henri Lefèbvre, Rabelais (Paris: Les Editeurs Français Réunis, 1955), pp. 197-199.

17. Edwin M. Duval, The Design of Rabelais's ‘Pantagruel ‘(New Haven, Yale University Press, 1991), p. 60.

18. Claude-Gilbert Dubois, Mythe et langage au seizième siècle (Paris: Editions Ducros, 1970), pp. 11-41.

19. G. Postel, L’interprétation du candelabre de Moyse, p. 394. cited in Dubois, p. 39.

20. According to Austin, speech is an act with three distinguishable levels of action. A speech act is minimally a “locutionary act” or the uttering of certain words in a sentence with a particular meaning. Ultimately, it is a “perlocutionary act” or the producing of an effect on an audience by the saying of something. The illocutionary act is an intermediate act distinguishable from the locutionary act in that although the latter entails the proferring of sounds with meaning, the former refers to the act that the producing of those words accomplishes in the language or culture in question. Illocutionary acts are conventional. Even when they are accomplished by non-verbal means, e.g., when the waving of a hand is used as a warning, the means involved must be conventional. Yet the means of achieving a perlocutionary act, such as surprising, frightening or convincing, are not conventional by nature. One can always determine what illocutionary acts are performed by hearing what is said but not which perlocutionary effects are achieved. J. L. Austin, How to do Things with Words (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 94-122.

21. Austin, How to do Things with Words, pp. 117-118.

22. Some perlocutionary effects such as the pointing of a gun to persuade are secured through non-locutionary means. Austin, pp. 118-119.

23. M. A. Screech sees the confusion over gestures and arbitrary signs as the essence of the episode. “Natural physical gestures can only be misunderstood by fools-including learned ones: hence the happy laughter at the expense of Thaumaste.” Screech, p. 414.

24. See Grice, pp. 49-50 on conversational implicature. Grice affirms that implicature involves the speaker's belief that the hearer can decode the message implied. Panurge uses non-verbal communication and his audience's knowledge of the context to generate plausible meaning.

25. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr., (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1958), p. 35.

26. Luther also saw the value of language in its ability to be translated in order to spread the Word. See Claude-Gilbert Dubois, pp. 52-56.

27. In his instrumentalization of signs in later books, Panurge continues the pattern initiated by Friar John in Gargantua. See, for example, his reading of the papal decretals in the Quart Livre (IV, 52, 718).

28. “L’obligation de rendre est tout le potlach-tout don doit être rendu de façon usuaire.” Marcel Mauss, “Essai sur le don,” in Sociologie et Anthropologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), p. 212.

29. Daniel Ménager, “La politique du don dans les derniers chapitres du Gargantua,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 8, No. 2 (Fall 1978), 179-191.

30. John R. Searle, Expression and Meaning (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 144.

31. This combination is characteristic of the popular carnival tradition. Official culture is based on strict hierarchy and excludes such unstable couplings. See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 166.

32. De Malestroit, “Deuxième Paradoxe,” in Paradoxes Inédits: Collezione di Scritti inediti o rari di Economisti diretta de Luigi Einaudi, ed. Luigi Einaudi (Torino, 1937), III, 91.

33. Habermas, p. 306. Habermas explains that “[a] speech act may be called ‘acceptable’ if it satisfies the conditions that are necessary in order that the hearer be allowed to take a ‘yes’ position on the claim raised by the speaker. These conditions cannot be satisfied one-sidedly, either relative to the speaker or to the hearer. They are rather conditions for the intersubjective recognition of a linguistic claim, which in a way typical of a given class of speech acts, grounds a specified agreement concerning obligations relevant to the sequel of interaction.” Habermas, pp. 296-298.

34. The reader is meant to see this process as comic. Erasmus and other humanists Rabelais would have read condemned etymologies which involved crossing from one language to another. See M. A. Screech, Rabelais (London: Duckworth, 1979), p. 32.

35. Nicole Oresme, “Traictié de la première invention des monnoies,” in Traicitié de la première invention des Monnoies de Nicole Oresme et Traité de la Monnoie de Copernic, ed. M. L. Wolowski (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1976), 15, xlvi.

36. Henri Lefèbvre, Rabelais (Paris: Les Editeurs Français Réunis, 1955), p. 133.

37. Andre Bieler, La pensée économique de Jean Calvin (Geneva: Librairie de l’Université, 1961), p. 18.

38. Oresme, 18, liv.

39. For a psychoanalytical interpretation of this episode see Carla Freccero, “The ‘Instance’ of the Letter: Woman in the text of Rabelais,” in Rabelais's Incomparable Book Essays on His Art, ed. Raymond C. La Charité (Lexington, Kentucky: French Forum, 1986), 45-55.

40. Eric Auerbach, Mimesis, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 267-270.

41. Demerson, p. 338, n. 69.

42. Auerbach, pp. 275-276.