SOURCE: “The Chimeric Communities of the Quart Livre,” in The Portrayal of Community in Rabelais's Quart Livre, Peter Lang, 1997, pp. 13-54.

[In the excerpt below, Harp outlines the ways in which the encounter with the Ennasins in the Quart Livre reflects Rabelais's beliefs about evangelic humanism.]

Throughout the many episodes of the Quart Livre, Pantagruel and his crew visit twelve islands. With each landing, the crew of the Thalamège not only encounters a new community, but reaches a haven. In Christian art, ships seeking a harbor may symbolize souls in search of Heaven (Cirlot 294-95). Rabelais, from the outset of his book, presents his protagonists as Christian travelers. The crew, for example, sings Psalm 114, a description of the Exodus, immediately before the Thalamège sets sail. While the Dive Bouteille serves as an unlikely Promised Land, a parallel does seem to exist between the Pantagruelists' quest and the wanderings of the Elect.¹

The Thalamège rarely finds a comfortable haven in the course of its voyage, as most of the islands are homes to communities with values alien or even antithetical to those espoused by the Pantagruelists. In turn, the communities themselves vary dramatically in character and outlook. While previous research has already examined some of the insular communities individually—usually within a study of a particular episode—little effort has been made to determine the resemblances and distinctions among the Quart Livre communities. One must not overgeneralize about these communities, as this would distort a text whose appeal lies precisely in its multifarious episodes, but, nonetheless, fundamental groupings among them can be made.

The five initial insular communities presented in the Quart Livre—those first seen in the 1548 edition of the Quart Livre, along with the introductory Medamothi community—fall generally under the rubric of divertissement. These comic and often grotesque communities epitomize Rabelais's preoccupation with flights of thematic and verbal fancy: inhabitants of the Ennasin and Chicanou communities offer examples of a broad comedy which at times evokes the medieval fabliaux. While these communities may offer an oblique critique of human foibles, they function primarily as inventive backdrops for the crew's own exchange of tales.

In contrast, with the exception of the Macraeons, the subsequent six insular communities—those seen only in the 1552 edition—constitute pointed satirical caricatures of Rabelais's society. While revealing, to an even greater degree, the fantastic and comical elements already in evidence in the initial communities, the subsequent communities, beginning with Quaresmeprenant (Lentkeeper) and his adversarial neighbors the Andouilles (Chitterlings), offer in addition transparent caricatures of different political and religious groups known to Rabelais. In the case of Quaresmeprenant and the Andouilles for example, Rabelais offers his version of the conflict between the followers of Lent, or Roman Catholics, and the Swiss Lutherans. Appropriately, the last insular community of the Quart Livre—Gaster's island—serves as a composite of both the mimetic and the non-mimetic characteristics found in the previous communities.

The present chapter will discuss the initial insular communities while providing a review of the community central to the Quart Livre, that of the Thalamège. It is the community of Pantagruel and his companions which at once links and contrasts with the insular communities.

Pantagruel and his companions constitute the main community presented by Rabelais in the Quart Livre: it is they who will serve as a standard to which the reader may compare the insular communities. Pantagruel has eleven fellow voyagers, several of whom have been seen in previous chronicles. By providing Pantagruel with specifically eleven companions, Rabelais evokes the twelve apostles, underscoring the pastoral nature of Thalamège journey. Like the apostles, the Thalamège crew members have different personalities but share, to varying degrees, an ardor for evangelical concerns. While rarely mentioned, eleven ships accompany the Thalamège, offering an echo of Pantagruel's crew.

Panurge, Pantagruel's companion who first appeared in Pantagruel, becomes in many respects the protagonist of the Quart Livre, as it is Panurge's attempt to determine whether he should marry which leads Pantagruel to undertake a voyage to the sage Dive Bouteille. Whereas Panurge's consultation of oracles constitutes the majority of episodes in Rabelais's previous chronicle, the Tiers Livre, in the Quart Livre it serves principally as the rationale for the Pantagruelists to embark upon a nautical, and hence adventuresome, voyage.

The debilitating indecision of Panurge, highlighted in the Tiers Livre, is overshadowed in the Quart Livre by his debilitating cowardliness. During the voyage, Panurge is in a state of transition, for his refusal to wear a braguette sets him apart from the other crew members. At the most fundamental level, Panurge represents an individual unable to decide on the community to which he should belong. At their first meeting, Pantagruel instinctively identifies Panurge as being “curious” and it is this curiosity, distinct from a sense of purpose, which seems to place Panurge in harm's way. Although Pantagruel is convinced of Panurge's riche et noble lignée, Panurge has been, since his introduction to the chronicles, a person with no apparent family or obligations: he depends entirely upon the generosity of Pantagruel.² François Rigolot has claimed that Panurge is in fact an alter-ego of Pantagruel, at least on the onomastic level, but this interpretation is perhaps overworked.³ The two characters are profoundly different throughout Rabelais's oeuvre and most markedly so in the Quart Livre. Panurge continues to be a comic character, but his overall function in the Quart Livre is problematic, and his crucial but admittedly enigmatic role will be considered as individual episodes are discussed.

Frère Jean, introduced in Gargantua, plays a prominent role in the Quart Livre, particularly in the first half of the chronicle. Still the epitome of vigorous and active bravery, the monk frequently serves as a foil to Panurge's timorous behavior.⁴ Disputes between the two provide the Quart Livre with some of its more comic passages. Yet, as the narrative proceeds, it becomes evident that at times the bawdy Frère Jean also puts himself at odds with Pantagruel by provoking the giant's anger. After receiving a sharp rebuke from Pantagruel while visiting the Papimanes—Chapter 50 of the chronicle—Frère Jean is rarely mentioned again until the last chapters, when good humor is restored among the crew at the expense of Panurge. Epistémon continues to be one of Pantagruel's more learned and reflective companions. Presented in Pantagruel as the young giant's tutor, he has now become Pantagruel's friend and companion. Other childhood and adolescent acquaintances become members of the Thalamège crew: Ponocrates, Pantagruel's teacher; Gymnaste, his squire; Eusthenes and Rhizotome, his soldier friends; and Carpalim, his footman.

Two new characters, integrally linked with the voyage, make their appearance. These are Jamet Brayer, the chief pilot; and Xenomanes, a seasoned explorer. While Jamet Brayer plays only a small role in the Quart Livre, Xenomanes regularly appears throughout the chronicle, often providing the crew with details of the various islands encountered. His very name, meaning “lover of foreign lands and peoples,” epitomizes the spirit of the Thalamège crew as it begins its voyage. Interestingly, it is Panurge who has chosen Xenomanes to establish the ship's itinerary. Because the voyage has been undertaken for his benefit, Panurge apparently has control over who will supervise it. Despite his cowardly and often odious behavior throughout the chronicle, he does show good judgment in choosing and surrounding himself with skilled and praiseworthy companions. An intriguing dynamism operates among Panurge, Xenomanes, and Pantagruel. Panurge instigates the voyage but remains glaringly inactive once in contact with other peoples. Pantagruel, for his part, leads the exploration, choosing which islands he wishes to visit by relying on the information provided by Xenomanes. Although Xenomanes has plotted a course on his Hydrographie for the Thalamège, the ship's route ultimately remains Pantagruel's decision. Each of the three characters is, to some extent, the driving force behind the voyage.

While Rabelais chooses to put his own name as author on the Tiers and Quart Livres, it is M. Alcofribas Nasier who continues to serve as narrator, just as he had been in Rabelais's previous chronicles. Whereas his role is minimized in the Tiers Livre, it becomes central in the Quart Livre. Alcofribas is an integral participant in the actions of the Thalamège community, frequently being addressed directly in the various episodes by Pantagruel and the other companions. As Raymond La Charité has noted, Alcofribas is no longer an outsider looking in but rather an “eye-witness reporter.” Considering him “tame, subdued and solicitous” in comparison with his behavior in the previous chronicles, La Charité deems Alcofribas the most “pliable and engaging character in the Quart Livre.”⁵ It is more to the point that he is the most influential, as Alcofribas relates only those episodes and details which he prefers to emphasize. By means of Alcofribas, the reader, too, becomes a member of the Thalamège community.

Alcofribas is also, arguably, the most problematical character of the Quart Livre. Ostensibly the author of both Pantagruel and Gargantua, the Abstracteur de Quinte Essence—as the title pages of the first two chronicles describe Alcofribas—shifts in the chronicles from author to narrator to character. As the name is an anagram for François Rabelais, his representation of Rabelais is possible. François Rigolot sees a mens/corpus dichotomy in Alcofribas's very name: the narrator's first name, based on that of an Arab abstracteur, or prognosticateur (Ali-ben-el Abbas), suggests a learned astronomer. “Nasier,” on the other hand, evokes one who sniffs or snivels. Hence, Alcofribas, by virtue of his name, unites the mind and body, or as Rigolot puts it, “Par la physionomie de son nom composé, le narrateur allie Socrate et Bacchus, le Banquet et Fessepinte, le rire et la moelle. Il est un prologue en miniature que le texte saura expliciter (By the physiognomy of his full name, the narrator links Socrates and Bacchus, the Banquet and Fessepinte, laughter and marrow. He is a small-scale preview of what the text will clarify. Onomastique 84, my translation).

As observed in the case of Alcofribas, Rabelais's use of onomastics not only reveals the degree of interest which language held for him but also provides insights into the personalities of the characters. Such a use of names maintains a literary convention dating from antiquity and dominating allegorical works of the Middle Ages. With the Quart Livre, Rabelais's onomastic games have become finely honed and more evident than in his earlier chronicles. Most significantly, they play a crucial role in the characterization of the insular communities. The majority of the members of the Thalamège community carry a Greek-derived name of onomastic significance: Pantagruel signifies “inspiring thirst”; Panurge, both “good for all” and “wily”; Carpalim, “quick”; Epistémon, “the wise”; Ponocrates, “the worker”; Rhizotome, “root-slicer”; Gymnaste, “trainer”; Eusthenes, “the strong”; Xenomanes, “lover of the foreign.” Invariably, one of the first important details that the reader learns concerning any of the islands is its name.

The name of Pantagruel's ship, the Thalamège, is of particular significance as it refers to the temporary home for Pantagruel and his crew. Just as the islands' names in the Quart Livre provide a clue to the nature of their inhabitants, so should this name. For Rabelais, the communities are defined not only by the nature and character of their inhabitants but also by their names. On initial investigation, the name Thalamège appears surprisingly unimpressive. In fact, it has a rather generic quality: in Greek the name signifies a ship with individual chambers. Naming a ship a “Ship” in another language surely appears uninspired in the notably imaginative works of Rabelais.

When “Thalamège” is considered from another perspective, however, the term becomes more evocative for the reader. A ship with individual rooms conjures up the design of Frère Jean's abbaye de Thélème, Rabelais's best-known model of an ideal community, described at the end of Gargantua:

Le dict batiment estoit cent fois plus magnificque que n’est Bonivet, ne Chambourg, ne Chantilly, car en ycelluy estoient neuf mille troys cens trente et deux chambres, chascune guarnie d’arrière-chambre, cabinet, guarde-robbe, chapelle et yssue en une grande salle (The said building was a hundred times more magnificent than is Bonnivet, or Chambord, or Chantilly, for in it were nine thousand three hundred and thirty-two rooms, each one furnished with an inner chamber, study, garde-robe … chapel, and opening into a great hall. 194-195; 118-119; ch. 53).

The Quart Livre does not provide a similarly elaborate description of the Thalamège, but, for Rabelais's readers, to whom the abbaye de Thélème was well known, no details were necessary.

The most apparent similarity between Frère Jean's abbaye and Pantagruel's ship lies in their names, Thélème and Thalamège. The word thélème is also of Greek origin, and it means volonté, or “will.” Although dissimilar in meaning, the two terms are nonetheless homonymic. It is just such wordplay that dominates Rabelais's oeuvre. In this case, on both the structural and semantic levels Rabelais pointedly establishes a parallel between Thélème and the Thalamège. They are the centers, the former fixed and the latter mobile, of activity among Pantagruel and his companions. While Thélème is the domicile for the adherents of Gargantua's evangelism, the Thalamège is the actual home, albeit temporary, of Gargantua's son, Pantagruel. Most significantly, they both serve as model communities to Rabelais's readers. Their joyful atmospheres stand in contrast to the funny but often chaotic milieux Rabelais describes surrounding them.

Two further observations may be made when comparing Thélème and the Thalamège. First, Rabelais introduces the two centers in opposing positions in his two works, thereby offering two different types of narrative perspective and balance in Gargantua and the Quart Livre. Gargantua concludes with the description of the abbaye de Thélème, which spans the last seven chapters. Thélème, aside from being a reward for Frère Jean, serves little purpose on the narrative level. On the other hand, Alcofribas describes the Thalamège for his readers at the outset of the Quart Livre. It remains central to the chronicle and becomes, literally, the vehicle for all narrative development.

Second, a transformation of Rabelais's image of the boîte de Silène, which appears in the prologue of Gargantua, occurs with the presentation of these two physical structures. Like the boîte, Thélème and the Thalamège both contain choses précieuses—young Pantagruelists and Pantagruel himself. Unlike the odd boîte, however, these receptacles themselves are aesthetically pleasing and attractive. The contrast between content and container has become muted, with the exterior no longer misleading the viewer as to the value of its content, but rather announcing and emphasizing it.

It is possible that contemporary readers made another association with the name Thalamège, as the Greek word, talame, signifies “nuptial chamber” (Huguet 7: 176).⁶ Specifically, Rabelais's literary contemporaries would be most aware of the term from its presence in the Greek name for a nuptial song, the épithalème. Evocation of this inherently joyous genre complements nicely both the celebratory narrative tone found in the opening chapters of the Quart Livre and the cheerful outlook of Pantagruel's community in general throughout the entire work. As the ultimate goal of the voyage is to determine whether or not Panurge will ever reach a nuptial chamber, the deliberate etymological link between the two terms underscores the leitmotif of marriage first established in the Tiers Livre. The theme of marriage, in turn, introduces that of union and community at large.

The significance of Pantagruel's group being found on a ship is also crucial to the very concept of community as it is illuminated in the present study. As a vessel in motion with no fixed position, the Thalamège becomes a model community which passes from one static community to another on its way to find the final “word” of the Dive Bouteille. A paradigm of model and anti-model communities establishes itself throughout the narrative with each insular encounter.

Edwin Duval argues convincingly that the Quart Livre's ending without the Thalamège's having reached its ostensible goal corresponds perfectly to the metaphorical voyage of a Christian's life. Rabelais establishes this metaphorical connection in the text's narrative (‘La messe’). Duval maintains that the incomplete journey in fact does not signify automatically that the Quart Livre is either unfinished or that it requires a sequel—namely the Cinquième Livre—as critics have assumed. Rather, the voyage necessarily can have no end. Duval's argument may be considered in a broader context: the voyage can have no end because it is also a voyage of education. Already in the Tiers Livre, Pantagruel is described as an amateur de pérégrinité et desyrant toujours veoir et tousjours apprendre (Oeuvres 536; ch. 47). As such, his ideal community, the Thalamège, must continue to be a traveling, evolving one. This technique is not unique to Rabelais. Geoffrey Chaucer's used much the same narrative design in his Canterbury Tales, as the pilgrims do not reach Canterbury in the narrative.

A description and characterization of the communities found on each island will familiarize the reader with the numerous groups visited by the Thalamège and provide a point of reference for remarks and analyses of some of the communities developed in the following chapters of this study. The Thalamège's first insular encounter is with the island of Medamothi. Three days’ voyage away from the port of Thalasse, this island, whose name in Greek means nul lieu, or “nowhere,” is attractive and welcoming. It is a large island, with a circumference “… qui n’estoit moins grand que de Canada” (… which was no less great than that of Canada. 38, 439; ch. 2). With its lighthouse-dotted coastline, Medamothi provides an impressive sight for arriving ships. The island appears to be a major trading post for voyagers. Pantagruel and his crew arrive at the time of an annual fair for which all the best Asian and African merchants have come. Pantagruel is struck by the resulting exotic flavor of the island:

… diverses tableaulx, diverses tapisseries, diverses animaulx, poissons, oizeaulx et aultres marchandises exotiques et pérégrines … estoient en l’allée du mole et par les halles du port (… divers tapestries, divers animals, fish, birds, and other exotic objects for sale … were … in the open markets of the harbor. 38, 440; ch. 2).

The crew takes advantage of the numerous markets: Frère Jean, Panurge, and Epistémon buy paintings, while Pantagruel buys a tapestry and three unicorns. Alcofribas provides fanciful and absorbing descriptions of unicorns and reindeer throughout the episode.

Pantagruel receives an unexpected farewell letter from Gargantua while visiting the island and immediately responds. Both letters appear in the text, taking up much of the Medamothi episode. Their eloquence rivals that of Gargantua's earlier letter to Pantagruel, in Chapter 8 of Pantagruel, which describes an enlightened education.⁷

Interestingly, Medamothi is the one island in the Quart Livre whose inhabitants are not the focus of Pantagruel's visit. No guide escorts him, nor does the island's sovereign receive him as will those on most island visited later, for the King, Philophanes, is away at his brother Philotheamon's wedding. This slight reference to marriage is the first of many instances throughout the Quart Livre in which Rabelais subtly alludes to Panurge's dilemma in deciding whether or not he should marry. By making such references, Rabelais prevents the reader from losing sight of the purpose of the voyage during the complicated narrative of the crew's various adventures and ports of call. Just as the large island's name is paradoxical—“nowhere”—so too are the names of the royal family. Derived from Greek, each name suggests “wanting to see and to be seen.” And yet, the two remain notably out of the sight of their distinguished visitors. As is perhaps appropriate for the inhabitants of a place called “nowhere,” the character of the Medamothians is only suggested, not revealed; apparently, it is of little importance to Pantagruel.

Nevertheless, the visit to Medamothi is crucial to the narrative's development as well as to the tone of the remainder of the Quart Livre. This opening episode did not appear in the 1548 Quart Livre, and I would argue that it serves primarily as an introduction to Rabelais's more thematically significant final version, one in which the notion of community becomes the central theme. Medamothi is not only a crossroads for international merchants but also represents the threshold to adulthood for Pantagruel. Medamothi is his final link with a familiar world: it is here that Pantagruel last receives word from his father—there will be no further communication between the father and son for the remainder of the voyage. Alice Berry, indeed, sees the entire voyage as an attempt on Pantagruel's part to escape his father Gargantua, a person inextricably linked with the past. Berry maintains that the voyage is a “centrifugal itinerary”—future-oriented—away from Gargantua, but that Pantagruel's gifts for Gargantua, purchased at Medamothi, are a means of giving back to the past. With the exchange of gifts, Pantagruel acknowledges the past while advancing into the future.⁸ Her argument perhaps casts Gargantua in an overly negative light but does underscore the crucial role of the Medamothi episode. At this island, the Thalamège, like all well-functioning communities, depends on exchange and communication with other communities, both familiar and exotic. Pantagruel gratefully, not dismissively as Berry claims, recognizes the close link between his itinerant community and Gargantua's Utopia.

Pantagruel's letter to Gargantua contains a serious description of the principle of exchange and sharing. Feeling incapable of repaying his father's generosity, Pantagruel resolves his filial debt:

Ainsi pourray je dire que l’excés de vostre paternelle affection me range en ceste angustie et necessité qu’il me conviendra vivre et mourir ingrat. Sinon que de tel crime soys relevé par la sentence des Stoïciens, lesquelz disoient troys parties estre en benefice: l’une du donnant, l’aultre du recepvant, la tierce du recompensant; et le recepvant tresbien recompenser le donnant quand il accepte voluntiers le bienfaict, et le retient en soubvenance perpetuelle. Comme, au rebours, le recepvant estre le plus ingrat du monde, qui mespriseroit et oubliroit le benefice (Even so I say to you that the excess of your paternal affection reduces me to the straits and plight of having to live and die an ingrate. Unless I am acquitted of such a crime by the dictum of the Stoics, who used to say that there were three parts in a good turn: one, of the giver; another, of the receiver; the third, of the recompenser; and that the receiver recompenses the giver very well when he willingly accepts the good turn and retains it in his memory forever; even as, on the contrary, the receiver would be the worst ingrate in the world who should despise and forget a good turn. 47, 445; ch. 4).

A symbiotic rapport between donor and recipient, as Pantagruel presents it, exists between individuals. However, readers of the Quart Livre will recall Pantagruel's notion of reciprocity while reading of subsequent examples of exchange, not only between individuals but between whole groups of individuals or communities. By means of Gargantua's letter, the initial episode of Medamothi thus provides a standard of behavior among communities for all succeeding episodes.

Rarely do the communities of the Quart Livre (acceptent) voluntiers le bienfaict et le retient en soubvenance perpétuelle (willingly) [accept] the good turn and [retain] it … forever) however. A selfishness permeates the atmosphere of most of the islands, and the arrival of Pantagruel, championing the values of generosity and magnanimity, highlights the islanders' vices to the reader. The transaction between givers and receivers as espoused by the Stoics and cited by Pantagruel will only be fully realized on the Thalamège. The communities ultimately disappoint the reader by failing to attain the same level of charitable commerce that Pantagruel has described.

Pantagruel's disillusionment is muted. Rabelais ultimately leaves any overt judgment of the communities to his reader. He recognized that a striking example without commentary could be more thought-provoking than an impassioned sermon. During a period when Jean Calvin and Catholic theologians railed openly against each other, Rabelais maintained a deliberate and forceful but less inflammatory stance. Unexpected details seen in the Medamothi episode reinforce this relatively moderate position. The painting which Panurge buys is a copy of a work by Philomela depicting her rape by her brother-in-law, who then had her tongue cut out so that she could not tell of the crime. Though limited to a dramatic portrayal free of copious explanations and commentaries, Philomèle is able to reveal the truth. Her painting establishes the pattern of representation as opposed to explanation advanced by Rabelais throughout his Quart Livre, as the communities found on the islands visited are rarely analyzed by the crew. Alcofribas tells only what has been seen and learned during the Thalamège's stay.

Rabelais is perhaps suggesting that the islanders lack the necessary Christian ethics. In considering the role of the recipient as celui qui recompense, Pantagruel explains that he can never repay his indebtedness to Gargantua but can only acknowledge it:

Estant doncques opprimé d’obligations infinies toutes procreées de vostre immense benignité, et impotent à la minime partie de recompense, je me saulveray pour le moins de calumnie en ce que de mes espritz n’en sera à jamais la memoire abolie: et ma langue ne cessera confesser et protester que vous rendre graces condignes est chose transcendente ma faculté et puissance (So being oppressed by infinite obligations all created by your immense benignity, and incapable of even the tiniest share of recompense, I will at least save myself from calumny, in that the remembrance of them shall never be blotted from my memory; and my tongue will not cease to confess and protest that to render you condign thanks is something transcending my faculty and power. 47-48, 445; ch. 4).

Pantagruel's description of his gratitude has all the attributes of a prayer. A reader might assume from this passage, if it is taken out of context, that Pantagruel is addressing the Heavenly Father rather than his actual father, Gargantua. Rabelais has taken a Stoic tenet and imbued it with Christian overtones.

In referring to the constant praise he will offer his father, Pantagruel echoes the advice Gargantua had given to him as a student in Paris in Pantagruel:

… il te convient servir, aymer et craindre Dieu, et en lui mettre toutes tes pensées et tout ton espoir, et par foy formée de charité, estre à luy adjoinct en sorte que jamais n’en soys desamparé par péché … Soys serviable à tous tes prochains et les ayme comme toy-mesmes (… it behooves you to serve, love, and fear God, and in Him put all your thoughts and all your hope; and by faith formed of charity, be adjoined to Him, in such wise that you will never be sundered from Him by sin … Be helpful to all your neighbors, and love them as yourself. Oeuvres 248, 162; ch. 8).

These remarks suggest that the community of Christians is a close one where, due to the strength of their faith, no real ill can befall its members.

Pantagruel continues his discussion of giving, receiving, and recompense with a more direct reference to Christianity. Assuring Gargantua that the perils of a voyage do not frighten him, Pantagruel explains in his written response that he has … ceste confiance en la commiseration et ayde de nostre Seigneur … (… this confidence in the commiseration and help of Our Lord … 48, 445; ch. 4). In exchange for his constant faith, Pantagruel will receive the protection of the Lord.

After the plethora of ambiguous signs and premonitions described in the Tiers Livre, the clarity of meaning represented in this opening episode of the Quart Livre demonstrates an unexpected shift. The chameleon and the tarande, the exotic animals discovered by the crew on Medamothi, clearly indicate their paour et affections by changing the color of their skin. Surroundings determine their affections:

(La renne) change de couleur selon la varieté des lieux es quelz il paist et demoure. Et represente la couleur des herbes, arbres, arbrisseaulx, fleurs, lieux, pastiz, rochiers, generalement de toutes choses qu’il approche ([the tarande] changes color according to the variety of places where it feeds and stays. And it takes on the color of the plants, trees, shrubs, flowers, places, meadows, rocks, and generally everything it comes near. 40-41, 441; ch. 2).

Here again, Rabelais provides an example of a visual, non-verbal, largely unambiguous sign. Whereas the first two signs, the painting and the ribbon, were objects, the reindeer, the chameleon, and the other creatures mentioned, which supposedly change color, are obviously animate beings and, as such, their role as sign-givers acquires multiple, even symbolic connotations. First of all, the reindeer and the chameleon offer instances of an individual adapting itself to its environs, that is to say, its community. Whether or not such conformity is advantageous remains unknown: Rabelais does not indicate why the animals alter their color and indeed does not imply that any reason exists. Most scholars have concluded that this passage merely emphasizes the exotic nature of newly discovered regions during the sixteenth century. To some extent, this interpetation is valid. Explorers were recounting similar oddities in their voyage journals, and there is little doubt that Rabelais intended for his Quart Livre to share the exotic flavor of the diaries. Yet, the actual behavior of the animals clearly has an allegorical meaning. Presented at the beginning of a narrative concerning the encounter with many different environs, the story of the reindeer and chameleon adumbrates one resolution to such encounters: allowing oneself to be absorbed into and transformed by the community. Whether or not the crew of the Thalamège will integrate itself with the various islanders it encounters remains to be seen.

Second, the chameleon epitomizes the character of Panurge, a character easily influenced by any opinion or milieu with which he is confronted. His vacillating behavior in the Tiers Livre establishes his capricious nature, and the example of the chameleon reinforces this.

The non-verbal means of communication presented in the opening Medamothi episode are not simply examples of exoticism. Rather, they suggest that clarity of meaning is sometimes possible, but that ambiguity will always exist when interpretation comes into play. The changing colors of the reindeer and the chameleon further reflect upon the dynamics of a community and its influence upon an individual. Both factors dominate the subsequent episodes in the Quart Livre.

Upon leaving Medamothi, the Thalamège sights a ship of French merchants from Saintonge. The encounter between the Thalamège and the other ship comprises four chapters of the Quart Livre (Chapters 5-8), one of the better-known passages of the work. Because most scholarship has emphasized the dispute between Panurge and the merchant Dindenault in the Lanterners episode, other interesting aspects of this episode have remained unexamined. The narrative emphasizes the pleasure that the two crews take in seeing each other; this is one of the few times when the crew responds enthusiastically to meeting others:

La joye ne feut petite, tant de nous comme des marchans: de nous, entendens nouvelle de la marine, de eulx, entendens nouvelles de terre ferme (There was no little joy, both on our part and on the merchants': on ours, to get news of the sea; on theirs, to get news of terra firma. 50, 447; ch. 5)

An immediate and spontaneous exchange occurs between the two groups of Frenchmen. Alcofribas goes on to say that Pantagruel is particularly pleased when he learns that the Saintongeois are returning from Lanternland where the inhabitants offer belle, honorable et joyeuse compaignie (beautiful, honorable and joyful company. 50; ch. 5).⁹ The crews conclude that the Thalamège could easily visit the Lanterners:

… ayans advertissement que, sus la fin de juillet subsequent, estoit l’assignation du chapitre general des Lanternes, et que, si lors y arrivions (comme facile nous estoit), voyrions … des Lanternes … (… learned that for the end of the forthcoming July was set the general meeting of the Lanterns, and they were making great preparations there, and that if we were to arrive there at that time (as it was easy for us), we would see … some Lanterners … 50, 447; ch. 5).

On the way, the crew of the Thalamège would discover another kingdom:

Nous feut aussi dict que, passans le grand royaulme de Gebarim, nous serions honorifiquement repceuz et traictez par le Roy Ohabé, dominateur d’icelle terre. Lequel et tous ses subjectz pareillement parlent languaige François Tourangeau (We were told that, when we stopped at the great kingdom of Gebarim, we would be honorifically received and treated by King Ohabé, ruler of that land, who speaks Touraine French, as do all his subjects likewise. 51, 447; ch. 5).

The passage which tells of the Lanterners and of the kingdom of Gebarim is short: presented in the first paragraph of chapter 5, it has no apparent relevance to the subsequent altercation between Panurge and the sheep merchant, Dindenault, which constitutes the principal event of the episode. Moreover, despite Pantagruel's professed enthusiasm for visiting these two peoples, the Thalamège never goes to their lands.¹⁰ Lanternland and Gebarim are two communities which remain unvisited for unknown reasons. Guy Demerson notes that the general meeting of the Lanterners is a reference to the 1546 session of the Council of Trent (Rabelais, Oeuvres 595). Rabelais does not highlight this allusion, however; if he did, Pantagruel's failure to attend would be more comprehensible. The Council's hard-line position against reform within the Church would be at odds with the Pantagruelists' stance against extremist viewpoints. The name evokes a previous Church Council, the Third Lateran Council of 1179, during which Innocent III, like his successor at the Council of Trent, was obliged to consider individuals, such as Peter Waldo of Lyon, who were choosing to interpret the Bible for themselves without benefit of Church doctrine. If this is one of Rabelais's references, it is obviously an obscure one, and intended primarily for students of the Church.

If one has followed Rabelais's works carefully up to this episode, he might suspect that the Lanterners are to play a notable role in the Quart Livre. Toward the end of the Tiers Livre, Panurge makes a direct reference to the country. In response to Pantagruel's call for a guide on their proposed voyage, Panurge responds that his friend Xenomanes would serve well; the navigator, passing by Lanternland, would find a Lanterness who would prove useful as a guide during the voyage.¹¹ Lanternland is once again evoked at the beginning of the Quart Livre. At the beginning of Chapter 1, a description of one of the ships accompanying the Thalamège features a large lantern, which, according to Alcofribas, suggests that the Thalamège will pass by the Lanternoys.¹²

Yet, these indications eventually become false leads, for the Lanterners will not appear in the Quart Livre. The omission was probably not an oversight on Rabelais's part. It is more likely that he did not intend to write of the journey's end and consequently did not include all the projected stops in his narrative. References in the Quart Livre to intriguing yet ultimately unseen lands are curious and emphasize the vast quantity of unfamiliar areas and peoples awaiting discovery. On the textual level, these allusions underscore the chronicle's open-endedness and lack of closure.

The fictional Lanternland did not originate with Rabelais. Inspired by the aerial city of Lamptown in Lucian's True History, Rabelais first alluded to this mythic land in Pantagruel where we learn that the polyglot Panurge is fluent in lanternois (253, 164; ch. 9).¹³ The Lanternland theme was further developed in an anonymous pastiche of Rabelais's work, le Disciple de Pantagruel ou la Navigation du Compagnon à la bouteille of 1537 (Oeuvres 536-537). By not actually depicting Lanternland, but rather referring to it throughout the Quart Livre, Rabelais highlights the etymological significance of the name.¹⁴

The word lanterne carried at least five different, indeed opposing, connotations during the sixteenth century. Lanterne might signify a type of toy lantern, dans laquelle un mécanisme faisait mouvoir des figures grotesques, called a lanterne vive (Huguet 4: 766). Such a toy corresponds well to the Rabelaisian sense of play and distortion. A vain or unimportant matter also could be called a lanterne (Huguet 4: 766). Lanterne has an architectural, and by extension, secretive connotation: it refers to a sorte de tribune d’où l’on peut voir et entendre sans être vu (a sort of platform from where one can see and hear without being seen. Huguet 4: 766). There is, too, the inevitable slang connotation, meaning “copulation”; the term in medieval French could refer to a woman's genitalia. Lastly, a type of fish with an iridescent head which purportedly could guide sailors during storms at sea is called une lanterne (Huguet 4: 767). The term appeared in several common expressions of the sixteenth century, including radouber la lanterne, meaning to gossip. The verb lanterner means to say des choses vaines, des niaiseries (foolishness, silly remarks) and, by extension, to waste one's time or to delay fulfilling an obligation.¹⁵ Most important is the word's reference to a source of light or to a lamp, and hence the allusion to enlightenment and learning. Rabelais may have been once again acknowledging Erasmus: the Adages discuss the expression “the Lamp of Aristophanes and Cleanthes” which refers to these men's renowned diligence in study and writing (110). The multiple connotations which lanterne carries makes it an ideal addition to the Rabelaisian vocabulary; it would have made an entertaining entry to the Briefve Déclaration. It would not be unreasonable to suppose that, in addition to the possible references to Church Councils suggested above, Rabelais mentions Laternland several times due to the etymological variety of its name. Each meaning evokes a different community which shares either religious, intellectual or professional goals and which serve in subtle contrast to the Thalamège community.

The Thalamège next lands at a triangular-shaped island, resembling Sicily, called “Ennasin” or nez-coupé. The island's name denotes the physiognomy of its inhabitants: they all have noses in the shape of an ace of clubs or as de treuffles (64). As Guy Demerson has indicated, this physical feature not only lends an exotic air to the islanders by evoking the best known physical trait of the Inuits, but it also, by alluding to the punishment of having lawbreakers' noses cut off, establishes the island as a sinister milieu (Rabelais, Oeuvres 605). On a broader level, the motif of the nose introduces the theme of the grotesque. Mikhail Bakhtin explains:

… the theme of the nose itself, which occurs throughout world literature in nearly every language … always symbolizes the phallus … (there is) a popular belief that the size and potency of the genital organs can be inferred from the dimensions and form of the nose … Such is the usual interpretation of this image in the literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance … (Rabelais 316).

For Rabelais's readers, then, a whole community of nez-coupés would have been comical.

Aspects of the island Ennasin establish a thematic pattern apparent in the islands that Pantagruel and his companions will subsequently visit. First, a play on language, names and remarks by the crew based on bawdy double-entendres prevails throughout the episode. In this episode Rabelais emphasizes sexual exchange as a basis for this community. Because couples on the island identify themselves chiefly as inanimate objects which are often used together, the crew cannot resist making broad interpretations of these pairings. Alcofribas describes these alliances in terms of sexual innuendo:

Un autre salua une siene mignonne, disant: “Adieu mon bureau.” Elle luy respondit: “Et vous aussi, mon procès.” Par sainct Treignan, dict Gymnaste, ce procès doibt estre soubvent sus ce bureau … Un autre salua une sienne alliée, disant: “Bon di, ma coingnèe.” Elle respondit: “Et à vous, mon manche.”—Ventre beuf, s’escria Carpalim, comment ceste coingnée est emmanchée? Comment ce manche est encoingné? Mais seroit ce poinct la grande manche que demandent les courtisanes Romaines (Another greeted a cutie of his, saying: “Good-bye, my desk.” She answered: “And the same to you, my lawsuit.” By Saint Ninian! said Gymnaste, that lawsuit must often lie upon the desk … Another man, greeting a female relative of his, said “Morning, my hatchet!” She answered: “And the same to you, my helve!” Odsbelly! cried Carpalim, how is this hatchet helved? How is this helve hatcheted? But mightn’t this be the great helve that the Roman courtesans asked for? 66, 455-56; ch. 9)?

Only Pantagruel does not participate in the verbal gymnastics. On Ennasin, as well as on the other islands, Alcofribas relates how Pantagruel closely observes but only rarely comments on the communities he is visiting. His reflective stance is consistent. Throughout the Chroniques, Rabelais portrays Pantagruel as an active but less audacious giant than his father Gargantua. From the opening chapters of Pantagruel, his role has been that of a prudent observer who is nonetheless capable of decisive action. In Chapter 5 of Pantagruel, we see him touring France, viewing the customs and events of the various regions, much as he will do on his voyage with Panurge. Like his father, Pantagruel could be incited to use physical force in his early youth. Upon seeing some vauriens prevent a youth from dancing, for example, Pantagruel became angry: “Quoy voyant, Pantagruel leur bailla à tous la chasse jusques au bort du Rosne, et les vouloit faire tous noyer; mais ils se mussèrent contre terre comme taulpes bien demye lieue soubz le Rosne” (Seeing which, Pantagruel gave chase to them all right up to the edge of the Rhône, and tried to get them all drowned; but they took cover like moles in the ground, a good half league under the Rhône. 234, 148; ch. 5). This episode is one of the few where Pantagruel reveals the overzealous exuberance of his father Gargantua, who in his youth was prone to drown Parisians in his urine and to steal the bells from Notre Dame.

Despite his youth, the Pantagruel of the Tiers Livre and of the Quart Livre demonstrates the forebearance that Gargantua has gained only with age and experience. In short, Pantagruel possesses the probity needed in a time of political unrest. He serves as an example to Rabelais's contemporaries, living in a period in which reactionary behavior in both religious and governmental realms reigned. Now as leader of the Thalamège community, Pantagruel's discretion and wisdom become central to the Quart Livre.

Whether or not Pantagruel reveals his opinion concerning a group of islanders, Alcofribas usually provides a detailed portrait of them. The presentation of every island contains either a direct or a veiled commentary on aspects of mid-sixteenth century French institutions and society. By presenting the various political, religious and intellectual partisans as discrete communities, Rabelais underscores the disruption of European Renaissance society at large. His social critique constitutes the secondary and yet more serious and profound element of each insular episode.

Multiple interpretations of the Ennasin episode are possible, and satirical allusions may not be immediately evident. Emile Telle considers the Ennasin episode to be an indictment of monastic life, with the Ennasins constituting a veritable anti-Thélème.¹⁶ However, Richard Berrong's interpretation of the island Ennasin differs radically from Telle's.¹⁷ Because of their very unified society, the Ennasins, according to Berrong, would appear to constitute Rabelais's ideal society, an ideal against which one can perceive the problems of the other “real” societies that the author presents in the Tiers Livre and especially the Quart Livre.

But Berrong's premise that the Ennasins represent an ideal social order is not convincing: the Ennasins kindly but frivolous natures lack the profundity which he attributes to them. Nonetheless, Berrong does highlight an important aspect of the Ennasin community: its distinctness from the islands later visited by the Thalamège. For all practical purposes, Ennasin is the first insular community that Pantagruel visits; as suggested above, Medamothi serves primarily as a decisive juncture for the Thalamège, one in which the crew is impressed by the island's unusual opulence rather than its inhabitants. Medamothi and the islands encountered after Ennasin, despite various strange attributes, have at the very least a social order which is comprehensible to Pantagruel and his crew. For example, it becomes apparent that the Andouilles on the island Farouche do not seem particularly alien to the crew; led by a queen and unified by a deeply ingrained mistrust of their adversary, Quaresmeprenant, these insular inhabitants demonstrate the same motivations and even live under the same monarchical system as do the majority of sixteenth-century European countries. In short, their non-human status becomes a mask for societies quite familiar and comprehensible to the crew, as they are, after all, caricatures of political and religious groups from Rabelais's day.

The portrait of the Ennasins, however, is less readily decipherable, as the caricature, if indeed it is one, remains obscure. Consequently, interpretations as diverse as Berrong's and Telle's develop. Physically, the islanders resemble “Poitevins”; socially, however, they have no precedent:

… estans ainsi tous parens et alliez l’un de l’autre, nous trouvasmes que persone d’eulx n’estoit pere ne mere, frere ne soeur, oncle ne tante, cousin ne nepveu, gendre ne bruz, parrain ne marraine de l’autre (… for while all were kith and kin and related to one another, not one of them was father or mother, brother or sister, uncle or aunt, cousin or nephew, son-in-law or daughter-in-law, godfather or godmother, to another. 66, 455; ch. 9).

Appellations among the islanders and by extension the “alliances” which they signify consequently become arbitrary:

… un grand vieillard enasé, lequel, comme je veidz, appella une petite fille aagée de trois ou quatre ans: mon père; la petite fillette le appelloit: ma fille (… one tall old denosed man, to be sure, who, as I watched called out to a little girl of four: “My father”; the girl called him: “My daughter.” 66, 455; ch. 9).

Numerous critics have sufficiently established the Ennasin episode as another example of Rabelais's mocking the monastic way of life. By calling the islanders Ennasins, Rabelais makes an oblique reference to the Essenian people, an austere Jewish sect described by Flavius Josephus (Telle 161). Rabelais continues the literary tradition of humanists such as Erasmus and Lefèvre d’Etaples, who protested against the vast variety of religious orders by referring to the Essenians in order not to mention specifically monks or religion (Telle 164).¹⁸ Both allusions suggest a general corruption of a static, isolated community.

The Ennasins' unfamiliarity to the crew has yet to be thoroughly studied, however. Pantagruel and his crew discover in the course of their visit that not only do the Ennasins maintain nonsensical designations among themselves, they in a sense become their sobriquets. Alcofribas says:

Nous presens, feut faict un joyeulx mariage d’une poyre … avecques un jeune fromaige à poil follet … En une aultre salle, je veids qu’on marioit une vieille botte avecques un jeune et soupple brodequin … je veids un jeune escafignon espouser une vieille pantophle (In our presence was performed a merry marriage of a female pear … to a young cheese with a downy chin … In another room, I saw that an old boot was being married to a supple young buskin. 69-70, 457; ch. 9).

Whereas the crew initially discovers the inhabitants calling each other objects, further encounters reveal that the Ennasins emerge as objects.

The crew of the Thalamège recognize only two social conventions supported by the Ennasins: marriage and the maintenance of a podestà. Both institutions constitute poor imitations of the original. The podestà possesses no authority. Once again, only a title distinguishes him from his compatriots: he is called a podestà and hence becomes one. Further, Ennasin marriages appear to be founded on lasciviousness and avarice rather than on mutual love and admiration. They certainly do not offer Panurge promising examples of the conjugal union he fears and yet desires. Indeed, they possibly mirror contemporary French marriage customs. This refusal of strong community rule should be considered principally in the context of Pantagruel's voyage, however, and not viewed solely as a critique of one aspect of Rabelais's contemporary society, the monastic life.

The isle of Cheli is the third stop for the Thalamège. A virtual land of milk and honey, Cheli, whose name resembles a Hebrew word for “peace,” exemplifies a land of plenty or, as it is called in the French tradition, “le pays de Cocagne.” Having just visited ces mal plaisans Allanciers, avecques leur nez de as de treuffle (the unattractive Kith-and-Kinners [Allianciers], with their ace-of-clubs noses), the crew of the Thalamège finds this lush and rich land with its charming inhabitants a welcome stopover (70, 458; ch. 10). Their visit at Cheli is a brief one, both in terms of the voyage—less than a day—and in terms of the narrative—two short chapters. It would seem initially that the Cheli episode serves primarily as an opportunity for Frère Jean, Epistémon, Pantagruel and Panurge to exchange humourous but seemingly inane tales. The stories' lack of a central theme, however, in turn reflects both on the crew of the Thalamège and on the community glimpsed on the island of Cheli.

Cheli's king, Panigon, or “easy going fellow,” heartily greets Pantagruel and his companions and then escorts them to his castle:

Sus l’entrée du dongeon se offrit la royne, accompaignée de ses filles et dames de court. Panigon voullut qu’elle et toute sa suyte baisassent Pantagruel et ses gens. Telle estoit la courtoisie et coustume du pays. Ce que feut faict, excepté Frère Jan, qui se absenta et s’ecarta par my les officiers du Roy (Above the donjon gate the queen presented herself, attended by her daughters and all the ladies of the court. Panigon wanted her and all her suite to kiss Pantagruel and his men. Such was the courteous custom of the country, which was done, except for Frère Jean, who took off and stayed apart among the king's officers. 70-71, 458; ch. 10).

From this single detail, it is clear that protocol dominates the Chelians. Frère Jean leaves no doubt as to his impressions of their mores:

… j’en sçay mieulx l’usaige et cerimonies que de tant chiabrener avecques ces femmes, magny, magna, chiabrena, reverence double, reprinze, l’accollade, la fressurade, baise la main de vostre mercy, de vostre majesta, vous soyez, tarabin, tarabas. Bren, c’est merde à Rouan … ceste brenasserie de reverences me fasche plus qu’un jeune diable … (… I know their customs and ceremonies better than how to shittershatter so much with all these women, manyee, manya, shitershattery, bow, repeat, once again, the hug, the embrace, kiss your majesty's hand, be most welcome, pish tush. That's crap, known as shit in Rouen! … this turdocrapery of scrapes and bows makes me madder than a young devil … 71-72, 459; ch. 10).

His companions respond, not in direct agreement or dissent, but by offering entertaining stories, all of which treat to a greater or lesser degree the practice of propriety. Frère Jean tells of the lord of Guyecharois who, by blindly following expected decorum, ends up kissing several pages dressed as young maidens. Epistémon describes a monk in Florence who questions the value of beautiful architecture and stunning antiques if no roast-shops are to be found in their midst. Although this anecdote targets primarily the fabled gluttony of monks, it points out as well, in true Rabelaisian form, the necessity of practicality in conjunction with refinement and gentility. Pantagruel draws on his classical training to recount the exchange between Antigonus, king of Macedonia, and the poet Antagoras. Seeing Antagoras himself preparing a meal of lobsters, Antigonus mockingly wonders if Homer prepared lobsters while writing of Agamemnon. Antagoras retorts by asking if Agamemnon in performing his many brave feats would have bothered to wonder if someone in his camp was preparing lobsters. Panurge concludes with a clever tale that contrasts with Pantagruel's, which is set in contemporary times (the 1530's, when Francis I was battling Charles V) rather than in antiquity, lending an air of actuality to the conversation. In addition, two well-known sixteenth-century nobles, Breton Villandry and the duc de Guise, are the subjects of the anecdote. The duke remarks that Breton, although wearing a handsome and elaborate suit of armor, has never been seen in the midst of battle. Breton boasts that of course he has seen battle, indeed in a position where the duke himself would not be found. Seeing that his remark has offended the duke, Breton quickly adds that he was in the rear line where the duke would not have tolerated hiding.

A curious complexity is established by this tale. Unlike those of the three previous stories, this tale's resolution is ambiguous. Panurge does not clarify whether Breton's final statement is an adroit attempt to mask his initial, unwittingly contemptuous statement, or if his initial claim of valor constitutes the setup of a joke with his follow-up becoming the punch line. It also could be a case of the seigneur having truly retreated to the rear guard and straightforwardly admitting as much. Although Breton laughs as he explains his comment to the duc de Guise, the reader is not sure to what extent Breton is joking or telling the truth. Nor does the reader learn the reaction of the duc de Guise—does Breton appease the duke with his explanation or does the duke remain insulted?

Pantagruel's story has in fact demonstrated the same narrative pattern, and the Macedonian king's response to Antagoras's witty but acerbic query is unknown. It is fitting that Panurge, a character who throughout the Chroniques has demonstrated a mercurial nature, should relate this unexpectedly complex tale. Breton's manner of saving face by hastily backtracking with excuses and possible fabrications mirrors Panurge's habitual behavior in the earlier chronicles and foreshadows his conduct during and after the tempest scene in chapters 17 and 24 of the Quart Livre. After this suite of stories, no more mention is made of Panigon's kingdom, as the reader learns at the end of Chapter 11 that the tales have been told as the crew returns to port and the ships leave Cheli immediately thereafter.

The Cheli episode develops into a pastiche of one aspect of the classical epic. Cheli is an island of ease and comfort where challenges and goals do not exist. Rather, the inhabitants concern themselves with useless gestures that give only the illusion of action. As such, Cheli represents the trap of complacency which a vigorous hero such as Pantagruel must avoid if he is ever to reach the level of excellence that his position demands. The leitmotif of sensual pleasures tempting stalwart heroes finds its source in both the Aeneid and the Argonautica.¹⁹ Rabelais once again draws a parallel between his hero and those of the classical Greek writers, one that would have been obvious to the more educated readers of his time. The allusion also underscores Pantagruel's, not Panurge's, heroic role in the Quart Livre. No one in the Thalamège community appears tempted by the inordinate ease found on Cheli. Despite their differences, Pantagruel's companions are all essentially practical and none hesitate to joke about the officious ways of Panigon's kingdom. They are also active: the complacency found on this island and those yet unseen is fundamentally alien to the Thalamège community members' desire for and, in fact, need for discovery and exchange.

Pantagruel travels on to the island of Procuration, where the crew's encounter with a people calling themselves Procultous and Chicanous prompts a sequence of stories told among the Pantagruelists. As seen in the last episode on Cheli, the activities of Procuration's inhabitants serve as a background motif to the crew's stories. The tales comprise five chapters, however, as opposed to the two which make up the Cheli visit. In contrast with the previous episode, the nature of the islanders is fully explored. The Chicanous become the focal point of the anecdotes recounted by Panurge and Pantagruel.

As the island is immediately described as un pays tout chaffouré et barbouillé (a country that is all jumbled and begrimed), the reader knows from the outset of the narrative that Procuration is the home of a people quite alien to the crew of the Thalamège (77, 462; ch. 12). The name Procuration itself serves as a trope for the reader familiar with Rabelais. It evokes, for instance, the memorable episodes in the previous chronicles where lawyers become a source of ridicule. In the Tiers Livre, Panurge purposely mispronounces procureur in order to emphasize the middle syllable which evokes cul, or “ass”:

J’en demande à messieurs les clercs, à messieurs les présidens conseilliers, advocatz, proculteurs et autres glossatuers de la vénérable rubricque de frigidis et maleficiatis (I ask milords the clerics, milords the presidents of the courts, counselors, attorneys, procurators, and other commentators on the venerable rubric On the frigid and spellbound. 420, 298; ch. 14).

In the Quart Livre, Rabelais continues this play-on-words by introducing the inhabitants of Procuration as “Procultous” as well as Chicanous. The first name does not reappear for the remainder of the episode, however, and the inhabitants are called only “Chicanous” thereafter. Rabelais has made his joke and apparently prefers not to belabor it. The name “Chicanou” is a more apt description of the Procuration inhabitants, as it suggests chicaner or “chicanery.” The Chicanous, as Pantagruel and his companions discover, are not procureurs in the legal sense of the term but rather tricksters for hire. They risk their safety and often their lives in return for payment. The Chicanous then are procureurs in the literal sense: they are constantly in search of money.

The Chicanous'character becomes evident from the first paragraph of Chapter 12. Their lack of generosity, as well as their self-interest, distinguishes them markedly from the crew of the Thalamège:

Là veismes des Procultous et Chiquanous, gens à tout le poil. Ilz ne nous inviterent à boyre, ne à manger. Seulement, en longue multiplication de doctes reverences, nous dirent qu’ilz estoient tous à nostre commendement, en payant (There we saw the Pettifoggers and Shysteroos, monstrous hairywild men. Only after a long sequence of many learned salutations, they told us that they were all at our service—for pay. 77, 462; ch. 12).

The services which the Chicanous perform are unorthodox, albeit sought-after, and they verbally abuse “un gentilhomme” at the request of a moine, prebstre, usurier ou advocat (monk, priest, usurer or an advocate 78, 462; ch. 12). In essence, however, they are being paid to be beaten, since no self-respecting gentleman will tolerate such insults. He feels compelled to punish the Chicanou physically. The Chicanou in question often receives double payment, as he will be so badly injured from his beating that the gentleman is obliged to pay reparations. The Chicanous maintain a direct rapport between their beatings and their livelihood: si par long temps demouroient sans estre battuz, ilz mourroient de male faim, eulz, leurs femmes et enfans (if they remained a long time without being beaten, they would die of starvation, they, their wives, and their children. 77, 462; ch. 12).

Despite the graphic descriptions of the Chicanous' beatings, their state evokes pity neither in the crew of the Thalamège nor in the reader. It is to be noted that the Chicanous' employers—monks, clerics, usurers and lawyers—are the standard targets of scorn in Pantagruel's world, whereas their victims are gentlemen, men with whom the Pantagruelists would sympathize. In addition, the person who explains the Chicanous' means of living is a nameless truchement, or “interpreter,” who offers no other information on their way of life which might endear them to the reader. We learn nothing of their family or cultural life. Their occupation is, from all appearances, their life, and, therefore, they become an archetype of mercenary behavior as well as an antithesis of pantagruelistic life.²⁰ Their suffering for others is both comic and perverse because it is based on avarice rather than on charity. The Chicanous demonstrate no individuality; in fact, they are each called “Chicanou” rather than “the Chicanou” and hence their role in the tale becomes that of père dindon, or dupe, of the medieval tradition.²¹

Although the reader of the Procuration episode needs an explanation of the island's inhabitants, it becomes evident that at least Panurge is aware of the Chicanous' habits and proceeds to recount a long tale of how the lord of Basché got the best of several Chicanous and, in the process, avoided paying reparations. It is only natural that Panurge, a consummate trickster, should be familiar with both the charlatans and those who outwit them. He regales his fellow companions with a highly-detailed story which stands in direct contrast to his own increasingly apparent inaction.

Panurge's protagonist promptly establishes himself as a good Pantagruelist. Described as a couraigeux, vertueux, magnanime, chevalerueux (courageous, valorous, magnanimous, chivalrous) noble who has just returned from helping the duc de Navarre defend himself against the aggressions of Pope Julius II, the lord reveals the patriotism and valor which Pantagruel holds dear (78, 462-463; ch. 12). Panurge emphasizes the lord's generous nature and his hearty appreciation for recreation and dining. Upon his homecoming, Basché is plagued by Chicanous sent by the gras prieur de Sainct Louant (fat prior of Saint-Louant 79, 463; ch. 12). He informs his wife, his curate Oudart and the other members of his household that, with their help, he will trick the Chicanou. At the Chicanou's next arrival, the household will appear to be celebrating a marriage, with the Chicanou invited to join in. Following the ceremony, the guests, according to custom, all will give each other light taps in order to “remember” the wedding. When they reach the Chicanou, however, they will give him violent blows. Basché encourages his household's participation by giving extra money to his servants. It is to be noted that, by including a mock wedding in his story, Panurge makes a game out of marriage as a whole, and hence refuses to take seriously the conjugal union which he himself has under consideration.

An unappealing Chicanou, recognized by his rough clothing and bad horse, but nevertheless wearing a silver ring on his thumb, arrives that very day from the disagreeable sounding Isle Bouchard and the seigneur's scheme goes according to plan:

… ilz le festoierent à grands coups de guanteletz, si bien qu’il resta tout estourdy et meurtry, un oeil poché au beurre noir, huict coustes freussées, le brechet enfondré, les omoplates en quatre quartiers, la maschouere inferieure en trois loppins, et le tout en riant. Dieu sçayt comment Oudart y operoit, couvrant de la manche de son suppellis le gros guantelet asséré, fourré d’hermines, car il estoit puissant ribault. Ainsi retourne à l’Isle Bouchard Chiquanous, acoustré à la tigresque, bien toutesfois satisfaict et content du siegneur de Basché, et moyennant le secours des bons chirurgiens du pays vesquit tant que vouldrez (… they feted him with great blows with the gauntlets, so roundly that it left him all punchy and bruised, with one eye poached in butter sauce, eight broken ribs, his breast bone knocked in, his shoulder blades each in four quarters, his lower jaw in three pieces, and all this done laughing. God knows how well Oudart operated, covering with the sleeve of his surplice the great steel-trimmed gauntlet with the ermine fur, for he was a powerful rascal. So Shysteroo goes back to L’Isle Bouchart, cruelly battered, but quite satisfied and content with the lord of Basché; and with help from the good surgeons of the region he lived as long as you like. 81, 464; ch. 12).

The Chicanou's actual pleasure in being beaten is surprising, if not repulsive, to the reader and highlights the perverse outlook of the Chicanous. Their lack of generosity coupled with their obsession with monetary and physical payment contradicts the humanist tenets of the Thalamège community. The passage is chiefly a comic one, however, and displays familiar Rabelaisian features: Rabelais continues to indulge his passion for medical terms as he describes the Chicanou's injuries. Moreover, Oudart's overzealous use of a steel glove echoes Frère Jean's violent and enthusiastic tendencies as first described in Gargantua and later noted in the Tiers Livre and the Quart Livre.

The Chicanou episode does not end with Panurge's account of the lord of Basché's revenge, as he continues his tale with a recital of the lord's own story, told to his household after the above-mentioned Chicanou's departure. Basché chooses as his subject François Villon who, acording to the account, chose to seek vengeance against a character as disagreeable as the Chicanou: Frère Estienne Tappecoue. The monk provoked the ire of Villon by refusing to lend his cape as a costume in a Passion play organized by Villon. In retaliation, Villon arranges later for all the actors, armed with firecrackers and torches, to dress in animal hides and surprise Tappecoue on the road as he rides home from a nearby village. Startled by the sight and sound of the group, Tappecoue falls from his horse and, unable to extricate himself from his stirrups, is dragged by the galloping filly:

Ainsi estoit trainné à escorchecul par la poultre, tousjours multipliante en ruades contre luy et fourvoyante de paour par les hayes, buissons et fossez. De mode qu’elle luy cobbit toute la teste, si que la cervelle en tomba près la croix Osanniere; puys les bras en pieces, l’un çà, l’aultre là; les jambes de mesmes; puys des boyaulx feist un long carnaige, en sorte que la poultre au convent arrivante, de luy ne portoit que le pied droict et soulier entortillé (So he was dragged flayass by the filly, who kicked out against him harder than ever, always multiplying the kicks against him, and was straying off the road in her fright through the bushes, hedges, and ditches. With the result that she quite bashed in his skull, so that his brains fell out near the Hosanna Cross; then came the arms, in pieces, one here, one there, likewise the legs; then she made one long carnage of the bowels; so that when the filly reached the monastery, all she bore of him was his right foot and entangled shoe. 84-85, 466; ch. 13).

Villon is most pleased with this outcome, telling the “devils” that they “acted” very well. Basché tells his household that they too have acted very well in their performance with the Chicanou and that their wages consequently will be doubled. Basché then generously distributes gifts of sterling silverware among his servants, proclaiming that he would prefer endurer en guerre cent coups de masse sus le heaulme au service de nostre tant bon Roy qu’estre une foys cité par ces mastins Chiquanous, pour le passetemps d’un tel gras Prieur! (to endure a hundred blows on my helmet in war in the service of our best of kings than be summoned once by these Shysteroo curs, for the sport of a fat prior like that one! 86, 467; ch. 13).

Panurge concludes his tale of the lord of Basché with an account of visits from two more Chicanous at the noble's estate. The household, interrupted each time in its gameplaying and dining, hastily arranges a mock wedding festivity, and the visiting Chicanou, subsequently, is beaten soundly, Oudart's steel glove being much in evidence. Graphic and imaginative descriptions of the physical violence dominate the story, with typical Rabelaisian vocabulary such as

morrambouzevezengouzequoquemorguatasacbacguevezinemaffressé (snoutcrapgutanbuttmorgatysackbackpopsmashed)

to express “hit” and

morderegrippipiotabirofreluchambureluchamburelurecoquelurintimpane mens (snatchcatchadoodahodgepodgehumdrummings)

for “kick” appearing with regularity (90-91, 470; ch. 15).

François Rigolot provides a convincing analysis of the role of verbal play by explaining that Rabelais has revitalized a standard fight scene by emphasizing the language describing it. Indeed, he posits that the only interesting aspect of the episode is on the linguistic level:

Si les gens de Basché sont les héros de la farce, c’est avant tout parce qu’ils ont su se créer un langage approprié. On opte pour leur cause non qu’on se réjouisse de voir des gredins daubés, mais parce qu’on se laisse prendre au jeu de l’invention verbale (If the people of Basché are the heroes of the farce, it is above all because they knew to create an appropriate language. One favors their cause not because one enjoys seeing some scoundrels thrashed but because one is drawn into the game of verbal invention. Languages 130, my translation).

The scene becomes yet more farcical when the last Chicanou, who, in anticipation, had begun the brawl, compares the wedding celebration to the tumultuous wedding banquet of the Lapiths interrupted by the Centaurs and renounces any future return to the lord of Basché:

De là en hors, feut tenu comme chose certaine que l’argent de Basché plus estoit aux Chiquanous et Records pestilent, mortel et pernicieux que n’estoit jadis l’or de Tholose, et le cheval Séjan à ceulx qui le possederent. Depuys, feut ledict seigneur en repous et les nopces de Basché en proverbe commun (From there on out it was maintained as a certainty that Basché's money was more pestilential, deadly, and pernicious to Shysteroos and witnesses than ever was the gold of Toulouse and Sejus's horse to those who possessed it. Since then the said lord has been at peace and quiet, and Basché's weddings a common proverb. 92, 471; ch. 15).

Panurge's tale concluded, the Chicanou episode ends with a final chapter describing the reactions of Pantagruel, Epistémon and Frère Jean. After an uproarious story which culminates in a flight of verbal fancy, the opening tone of Chapter 16 is remarkably sober and restrained. Pantagruel notes that ceste narration … sembleroit joyeuse, ne feust que davant nos oeilz fault la craincte de Dieu continuellement avoir (this story … would seem merry, were it not that we must continually have the fear of God before our eyes. 93, 472; ch. 16). With this quotation from St. Paul on the subject of vengeance, Pantagruel offers no commentary on the details of the Basché story but rather judges the narration as a whole. It would seem that he sees no moral justification for the gratuitous and cruel violence seen in Panurge's account and hence obliquely criticizes Panurge. Epistémon, too, offers a critique of the story by claiming that it would have been a better story if the gras Prieur had been beaten, rather than the Chicanous:

Il dependoit pour son passetemps argent, part à fascher Basché, part à veoir ses Chiquanous daubbez. Coups de point eussent aptement atouré sa teste rase … En quoy offensoient ces paouvres diables Chiquanous (He was spending money for his sport, partly to annoy Basché, partly to see his Shysteroos drubbed. A tattoo of fists would have aptly adorned his shaven pate … What offense had these poor devil Shysteroos committed? 93, 472; ch. 16)?

Pantagruel does not respond to Epistémon's query but offers another history of recompense, taken from his reading of Aulus Gellius. Lucius Neratius, a Roman noble, would beat his servants without provocation. In order to appease them, however, he willingly gave them money in return: Ainsi despendoit son revenu, battant les gens au pris de son argent (Thus he spent his income, beating people for the price of his money. 94, 472; ch. 16).

Frère Jean, intrigued by such a practice, decides to propose it to some nearby Chicanous, calling out: Qui veult guaingner vingt escuz d’or pour estre battu en Diable? (Who wants to earn twenty crowns for getting a devil of a beating? 94, 472; ch. 16). The enthusiastic response is immediate, and a crowd of Chicanous surrounds Frère Jean, each one vying to be “hired.” An aggressive red-nosed Chicanou is chosen—much to the displeasure of the others—and Frère Jean hits him repeatedly until tired and then turns over the twenty crowns. Red-Snout, joyous, turns on his fellow Chicanous when they beg Frère Jean to beat them next, accusing them of stealing from his market. They thus entreat Panurge, Epistémon, and Gymnaste but to no avail: Alcofribas offers without comment that no one would hear of it. It would seem that Rabelais is mocking the practice of flagellation common among clerics in the sixteenth century.

After the lively passage recounting Frère Jean's brawl, the conclusion of the last chapter of the Chicanou episode contains a final ribald joke which seals the derisory tone taken toward the Chicanous. The crew of the Thalamège sees two Chicanou women mourning two Chicanous who have been hanged for having stolen the ferremens de la messe (ornaments for Mass) and hiding them under the parish belfry (97, 474; ch. 16). The women refer to the belfry using the colloquial term manche, or “handle,” an ambivalent phallic term which Rabelais has already highlighted in the Ennasin episode. Epistémon accordingly judges that the women have spoken in terrible allegorie (97). He ignores the plight of the hanged men and the grief of the women—once again, the Chicanous are Punch and Judy characters not to be taken seriously by either the voyagers or the readers—but immediately sees the off-color humor of the hiding place of solemn, ceremonial items. The joke emphasizes the Chicanous' rapacious nature and offers yet another gratuitous tweak at the traditional signs of worship. Pantagruel's estimation of the crime is left unknown; his silence is characteristic in the Quart Livre and it is often Epistémon who offers a word of summation, or in this case a punchline, as closure.

The next insular episode is a comparatively short one, with Rabelais departing from the broad humor seen in the Chicanou episode but maintaining an equally fanciful tone. The Thalamège visits the islands of Tohu and Bohu on the same day it leaves Procuration. Apparently because of the paucity of offerings on Procuration, the crew is in search of food and supplies. “Tohu” and “Bohu,” according to the Briefve Déclaration, signify deserte et non-cultivée in Hebrew (276). Huguet defines “Tohu vabohu” as chaos, the modern meaning of tohu-bohu (4: 258). No distinction is made between the two islands, and in fact the reader learns very little of them other than the fact that the giant Bringuenarilles, after choking on fresh butter, had died on one or the other of the islands the morning of Pantagruel's arrival.²²

Pantagruel also hears mention of the king of Cullan on Bohu, so one could justifiably assume that more than one, possibly several, kingdoms exist on each of the islands. Most of the Tohu/Bohu episode serves as a vehicle for Alcofribas's tales of strange deaths and hence the islands' names, denoting lifelessness, are only apt. Citing sources as diverse as Plutarch and Boccaccio, Alcofribas recounts the singular demise of twelve different persons, primarily ancients. Only after providing these accounts does he explain just how Bringuenarilles died.

This theme of strange deaths reappears in a better-known passage: Montaigne's essay, Que Philosopher, c’est apprendure à mourir (I20). Montaigne produces some of the same examples as Rabelais. Consider Rabelais's text:

Aeschilus, ce non ostant, par ruine feut tué et cheute d’une caquerolle de tortue, laquelle, d’entre les gryphes d’une aigle haulte en l’air tombant sus sa teste, luy fendit la cervelle … Plus d’Anacreon, poete, lequel mourut estranglé d’un pepin de raisin (Aeschylus, this notwithstanding, was killed by the drop and fall of a tortoise's carapace, which, falling on his head from the talons of an eagle high in the air, split open his skull … Besides Anacreon, a poet, who died choking on a grapeseed. 100, 475; ch. 17).

Montaigne presents these same incidents and in the same order:

Aeschilus, menassé de la cheute d’une maison, a beau se tenir à l’airte: le voyla assommé d’un toict de tortue, qui eschappa des pates d’un Aigle en l’air. L’autre mourut d’un grein de raisin … (Aeschylus, threatened with the fall of a house, takes every precaution—in vain: he gets himself killed by a sort of roof, the shell of a tortoise dropped by a flying eagle. Another dies from a grape seed … 86, 59).

This does not mean that Montaigne must have consulted Rabelais for these examples, for they were well-known among humanist readers. Battista Fregoso's popular book Des dits et faicts memorables, dating from 1518, could have been the source for both authors (Rabelais, Oeuvres 630). Rather, it is intriguing to note that both writers would use the same theme and even the same examples in such different styles. Rabelais's text is basically light-hearted: his last example of the giant Bringuenarilles fatally choking on some soft butter that was prescribed for an indigestion that stemmed from an over-consumption of pots and pans takes the edge off the most serious ontological subject a writer can address, the omnipresence of Death. On the other hand, Montaigne forces his reader to face squarely the question of Death:

Ces exemples si frequens et si ordinaires nous passant devant les yeux, comme est-il possible qu’on se puisse deffaire du pensement de la mort, et qu’à chaque instant il ne nous semble qu’elle nous tient au collet? (With such frequent and ordinary examples passing before our eyes, how can we possibly rid ourselves of the thought of death and of the idea that at every moment it is gripping us by the throat? I, 20, 86; 59).

It may be argued, however, that the two authors share the same intent. Offering in a rambling fashion a plethora of various demises, both writers, by strength of repetition, oblige their readers to consider the role of death in human existence. Rabelais does so at greater length. The episode following the chapter on Tohu and Bohu in both the 1548 and the 1552 editions of the Quart Livre describes the perilous tempest which the crew of the Thalamège barely survives (chs. 9-10 1548; chs. 18-24 1552). Here, not classical personages but the chief protagonist confronts the menace. Epistémon, in both versions, having survived the storm, comments on the human condition in a statement that could serve as anticipation to the query of Montaigne cited above:

Je consydere que si vrayement mourir est (comme est) de necessité fatale et inevitable, en telle ou telle heure, en telle ou telle façon mourir est en la saincte volunté de Dieu. Pourtant, icelluy fault incessamment implorer, invocquer, prier, requerir, supplier. Mais là ne fault faire but et bourne: de nostre part, convient pareillement nous evertuer, et, comme dict le sainct Envoyé, estre cooperateurs avecques luy … En veiglant, travaillant, soy evertuant, toutes choses succedent à soubhayt et bon port (I consider that if really it is of necessity fatal and inevitable to die (as it is), at such or such a time, yet to die in such or such a way is in the holy will of God. Therefore we must ceaselessly implore, invoke, pray, ask, supplicate Him. But we must not set our goal and limit there; for our part we should likewise put forth our utmost efforts, and, as the Holy Envoy says, be co-operators with Him … By being watchful, working, doing our utmost, all things turn out as we wish—safe and sound. 122, 488; ch. 23).

Montaigne will later echo Epistémon's sentiments: Il n’y a rien de mal en la vie pour celuy qui a bien compris que la privation de la vie n’est pas mal (There is nothing evil in life for the man who has thoroughly grasped the fact that to be deprived of life is not an evil. I, 20, 88; 60). However, his statement resembles a rote expression of Stoic principles and appears sterile in comparison to Epistémon's vigorous, personal, and optimistic attitude toward Death which is grounded in his Christian faith. By extension, he is supported in his faith by the Thalamège community, with Pantagruel, Frère Jean and even Panurge expressing alternately their faith in various ways throughout the narrative. As the chronicle proceeds, it becomes evident that Christian ideals are both the focus and the anchor of the Thalamège community and it is with the Tohu/Bohu episode that Rabelais begins to more frequently underscore this faith to the reader.

The Tohu/Bohu episode concludes with a brief mention of the other nearby paired islands: Nargues and Zargues, Teleniabin and Geneliabin, and Enig and Evig. Alcofribas does not indicate the nature or characteristics of these islands: their inclusion appears to serve as yet another example of Rabelais's preoccupation with onomastics, particularly paired ones, as seen in the Cheli episode.

In this particular instance, it is the toponyms which are of interest. The Briefve Déclaration lists Nargues and Zargues (Pish and Tush) as “names made to please,” Teleniabin and Geneliabin as Arab terms signifying “manna” and “pink honey,” and Enig and Evig as the German prepositions “without” and “with.” The word play not only provides a whimsical finish to the chapter but also changes the subject momentarily from Death, which has served as a leitmotif for the entire episode.

As mentioned above, the Thalamège does not immediately reach another port of call but encounters a violent storm during which the crew is confronted with likely death, an episode that plays a significant role in the Quart Livre and should not be underestimated. It served as the climax for the 1548 edition of the Quart Livre and, in general, is central to a complete understanding of both editions of the text. The second of five non-insular episodes found in the Quart Livre, I will discuss fully the storm interlude in Chapter 4. For the present, it suffices to recognize that the storm introduces one of the more important topics in the Quart Livre: that of the immortality of the soul. It provides Rabelais an opportunity to elaborate on the evangelical motifs which are integral to the notion of Pantagruelism.

After withstanding the storm, the Thalamège reaches port at an island inhabited by a people called the Macreaons. Their island is termed simply isle of the Macraeons and is part of a string of islands, the Sporades, which at one time were of great opulence but are at present, as Pantagruel discovers, poor and deserted. The character of the Macraeons differs markedly from that of the Chicanous. Alcofribas calls them bonnes gens (good people) who offer great hospitality toward the visitors. Their territory being composed primarily of forests, the Macraeons are a community of carpenters and are eager to help Pantagruel repair the Thalamège and its eleven accompanying ships, damaged by the storm at sea. The island of the Macraeons is described as the spot where Heroes and Daemons go to die. In this regard, it is analogous to Hesiod's evocation of the Islands of the Blessed in his Works and Days. In the Age of Heroes, a Golden Age, Zeus provided

an abode apart from men,
and made them dwell at the ends of the earth.
And they lived untouched by sorrow in the
islands of the blessed along the shore of
deep swirling Ocean, happy heroes for whom
the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet
fruit flourishing thrice a year, far from
the deathless gods, and Cronos rules over them
(qtd. in Giamatti 18).

Hence, Elyseum becomes a paradigm for sanctuary and refuge as it is desirable yet inaccessible.

The chief magistrate of the island, Macrobe, gives Pantagruel and his companions a tour of the island and its forest, showing them ancient pyramids, obelisks, and monuments, all inscribed with the hierglyphics of several different languages. These relics of the past establish the atmosphere of ancient history which pervades the island as well as the conversations between Pantagruel and Macrobe. The Macraeons speak in langage ionique; that is to say, ancient Greek. In addition, according to the Briefve Déclaration, the name Macrobe means homme de longue vie (a long-lived man; 278, 599). Within the text itself, Panurge informs Frère Jean that the name “Macraeon” also signifies vieillard in Greek. Panurge pursues his etymological study:

… je croy que le nom de maquerelle en est extraict. Car maquerellaige ne compete que aux vieilles; aux jeunes compete culletaige. Pourtant seroit ce à penser que icy feust l’isle Maquerelle, original et prototype de celle qui est à Paris. Allons pescher des huitres en escalle (… I think the noun bawd is derived from it. For running a bawdy-house is suited only for old women. The young ones are suited for tail-pushing. Therefore it would seem likely that here was the Maquerelle island, the original and prototype of the one there is in Paris. Let's go fish for oysters in the shell. 128, 491-92; ch. 25).

Panurge's conjecture on the origin of a Paris brothel is the only ribald remark found in the Macraeon episode: it would seem that Rabelais includes it simply as a matter of continuity within his own literary tradition and he dispenses with it quickly at the beginning of the episode. It does not even merit a response from Frère Jean, for Alcofribas then immediately passes to the measured and sedate conversation between Pantagruel and Macrobe.

Macrobe wonders at the fact that the Thalamège was able to survive the storm, and Pantagruel attributes the crew's well-being to the grace of God:

… le hault Servateur avoit eu esguard à la simplicité et syncere affection de ses gens, les quelz ne voyageoient pour guain ne traficque de marchandise (… the Savior above had had consideration for the simplicity and disinterested motivation of his people, who were not traveling for gain or traffic in merchandise. 128, 492; ch. 25).

Pantagruel emphasizes the distinctive nature of his voyage while underlining the non-exploitative nature of his crew: its members are neither mercenary nor profit-seeking but seek rather experience and knowledge. Pantagruel's subsequent explanation of the goal of reaching the Dive Bouteille not only informs Macrobe but also serves as a reminder to the reader who, in the midst of reading so many varied episodes, may have lost sight of the voyage's purpose. The oracle of the Dive Bouteille, Bacbuc, after all, has not been mentioned since Chapter 1. It is also fitting that the aims of Pantagruel and his companions are reintroduced at this point. The arrival of the Thalamège at the isle des Macraeons concludes the 1548 edition of the Quart Livre and hence all subsequent episodes, that of the Macraeons included, constitute the final, 1552 version of the Quart Livre.

After questioning from Pantagruel, Macrobe explains that the violent storm is the consequence of the death of one of the aging Heroes or Daemons that inhabit the dense forest of the island. Whenever one of the supposed “immortals” dies, cries and lamentations are heard while storms rage on both land and sea. Pantagruel compares the passing of ames nobles et insignes (noble and notable souls) to the snuffing out of a candle. As long as it burns, the flame offers warmth, light and clarity; once it is extinguished, its lingering smoke and odor irritate those around it (130, 493; ch. 26).

Epistémon continues the comparison, linking the death of a nobleman, specifically Guillaume du Bellay, Lord of Langey and governor of Piedmont, with the political upheaval and strife which immediately followed. In so doing, he makes reference to events in France which occurred between the composition of the Tiers Livre and the Quart Livre, as Guillaume du Bellay had died in 1543. More importantly, the passage serves as a tribute to this statesman. It is rare, and perhaps unique, in the chronicles for Rabelais to offer such an undisguised and glowing apology for one of his contemporaries. Rabelais appartently felt a great deal of gratitude toward du Bellay. In 1542 he had published a now-lost work dedicated to du Bellay, Stratagèmes c’est-à-dire prouesses et ruses de guerre du pieux et très-célèbre chevalier de Langey dans la tierce guerre Césariane. He had been in the governor's suite almost continuously since 1539 and had been mentioned in du Bellay's will. More importantly, it seems quite likely that Rabelais considered this patron to be a friend as there was no evident gain in praising him after his death. As has been noted before, moments of sincerity in which Rabelais lets drop the veil of satire, and even the narrative voice of Alcofribas, marks the Quart Livre and this eulogy to du Bellay is among the most striking.

Pantagruel continues the topic, recalling tyrants such as Herod and Nero who, foreseeing joy among the people upon their own deaths, arranged for civil chaos and war to reign afterwards. He also discusses at length the celestial phenomena which have been said to augur, rather than to follow, the death of noted heroes and nobles.

Pantagruel appears to have warmed to the subject, declaring that his recent risk at sea was in fact a blessing, for otherwise he would never have learned of the Hero's deaths from Macrobe. His observations dominate the rest of the episode, and which is unique in the Quart Livre. In all other episodes, Pantagruel acts chiefly as an observer, allowing himself only brief, albeit telling, commentaries during his voyage. It is primarily his companions who provide the crew's conversation. Thus, Pantagruel's dominating role in the Macraeon episode reveals the considerable importance which Rabelais placed on its theme, that of classical-Christian syncretism.

Pantagruel reassures Frère Jean, who has expressed concern that the demi-dieux of the Macraeons are in fact mortal:

Je croy … que toutes ames intellectives sont exemptes des cizeaulx de Atropos. Toutes sont immortelles: Anges, Daemons et Humaines. Je vous diray toutes foys une histoire bien estrange, mais escripte et asceurée par plusieurs doctes et scavans historiographes, à ce propous (I believe … that all intellective souls are exempt from the scissors of Atropos. All are immortal: angels, daemons, and human souls. However in this connection, I’ll tell you a very strange story, but one written and attested by many scholarly learned historians. 135-36, 496; ch. 27).

He goes on to tell of how an Egyptian naval captain, Thamous, had been told by a voice emanating from the island of Paxos to inform the port of Palodes that the god Pan was dead. After so doing, he hears loud cries and lamentations coming from many voices at the port. Pantagruel interprets the report of Pan's death as a veiled account of the death of Jesus Christ:

… celluy grand Servateur des fideles, qui feut en Judée ignominieusement occis par l’envie et iniquité des Pontifes, docteurs, prebstres et moines de la loy Mosaïcque. Et ne me semble l’interpretation abhorrente: car à bon droict peut il estre en languaige Gregoys dict Pan, ven que il est le nostre Tout, tout ce que sommes, tout ce que vivons, tout ce que avons, tout ce que esperons est luy, en luy, de luy, par luy. C’est le bon Pan, le grand pasteur, qui, comme atteste le bergier passionné Corydon, non seulement a en amour et affection ses brebis, mais aussi ses bergiers (… that great Savior of the faithful, Who was ignominiously slain in Judea by the iniquity of the pontiffs, doctors, priests, and monks of the Mosaic Law. And the interpretation does not seem preposterous to me, for He may rightly in the Grecian tongue be called Pan, seeing that He is our All. All that we are, all that we live, all that we have, all that we hope for is Him, in Him, from Him, by Him. He is the good Pan, the great Pastor, Who, as the passionate shepherd Corydon attests, holds in His love and devotion not only his sheep but also his shepherds … 138, 498; ch. 28).

Pantagruel is overcome at the thought of this death; Alcofribas concludes the episode by recounting how a reflective Pantagruel cries silently; large tears, like oeufz de austruche (ostrich eggs), run down his face (138, 498). The somewhat ridiculous image provides an incongruous and slightly comical closure to the passage, much as the last paragraph of the Tohu/Bohu episode had done. No further mention of Macrobe nor of the Macraeons and their island is made in the chapter, and only their satisfaction at the generous gifts bestowed on them by Pantagruel is noted at the beginning of the next chapter as the Thalamège sets sail. The Macraeons' island serves as the scene of the Quart Livre's most sobering and serious passage, as Pantagruel's deep emotion over the import of Christ's death has provoked him to tears. The Macraeon episode, found at the halfway point of the 1552 Quart Livre narrative, focuses on the hero of the text, Pantagruel: the giant is literally at the center, both narratively and thematically, of the book. No longer the reserved observer, Pantagruel talks at length to his companions and Macrobe of the deaths of heroes and ultimately of Christ. Rabelais chooses to emphasize here the reflective and evangelical side of Pantagruel's personality.

The Macraeon community is unique to the narrative and does not correspond ideally either to the caricatural or the chimeric community-categories established at the beginning of this chapter. While it clearly could not be considered caricatural, it nonetheless lacks the vivid and playful characterization evident in the portrayal of the chimerical Ennasin community, for instance. His land of heroes is far from the whimsical one described by Lucian in True History (311). The Macraeons are briefly mentioned at the end of the 1548 Quart Livre but are fully portrayed only with the publication of the 1552 edition. It would appear that, in writing the definitive version of the Quart Livre, Rabelais preferred to perfect the original text before supplementing it with additional episodes. He did so by adding both introductory and concluding insular communities. The initial island Medamothi, unseen in 1548, serves as a point of juncture for the Thalamège between the familiar world and the unknown. The stop at Medamothi, the site of Pantagruel's last contact with his father, Gargantua, highlights the decisive and bold nature of the voyage. The island of the Macraeons, too, serves as a transitional locus for the Thalamège, as Pantagruel, having been spared during the storm, finds his faith both tested and renewed there. By introducing the Macraeons' island as a port of sanctuary after the storm, Rabelais provides a satisfying conclusion to the original episodes. While the 1548 version disconcertingly concludes with the Thalamège still being buffeted by the effects of the storm, but approaching land, the final version has the same episode end with the ship safely docked and received by a friendly community.

It is notable that while Pantagruel appreciates the Macraeons, and as a veritable hero would be worthy to reside there, he nonetheless chooses to continue his voyage. The home of the Macraeons holds no interest for him: it is literally a place of the dead whose lifelessness is alien to his own vitality. Rabelais continues here the Renaissance tradition of depicting a false earthly paradise exemplified by Ariosto's Orlando furioso. While using the myth, he ultimately rejects its attraction, using it rather as a point of departure for his presentation of Christian Revelation.

Rabelais draws upon the syncretic tradition of his fellow Christian humanists in offering his own version of Elyseum. His account of Pan as Christ anticipates those of English Renaissance poets such as Ben Jonson's “Pan's Anniversary”, Andrew Marvell's “Clorinda and Damon,” and John Milton's “On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.” The episode is a serious one and stands apart from the other more satirical ones which follow it. In short, Rabelais's Elyseum episode highlights his evangelical theme and, hence, cannot be overestimated.

Notes

1. For a detailed study of the inclusion of Psalm 114 in the Quart Livre, see Smith, 73-81.

2. For Panurge's first appearance in Pantagruel, see Chapter 9, “Comment Pantagruel trouva Panurge, lequel il aima toute sa vie” in François Rabelais, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Guy Demerson (Paris, Seuil, 1973), 249-56.

3. Rigolot considers the question from a linguistic perspective: “Panurge devient alors l’autre face de Pantagruel, alter ego sous la graphie abrégée: alt. Panurge, anagramme exacte du géant.” François Rigolot, Poétique et Onomastique: L’Exemple de la Renaissance (Geneva, Droz, 1977), 103-104.

4. With his creation of Frère Jean, Rabelais maintains the literary tradition of the soldier-monk established in La Chanson de Roland with the character of the bishop-chevalier, Turpin.

5. These quotes are excerpts taken from La Charité's paper, “Narrative Moves in the Quart Livre,” read at the session “Rabelais's Quart Livre” at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, Washington, D. C. 27-30 December 1989.

6. Jean Antoine Baif uses this word at the end of his poem “Atalante”:

   … En la face chagrine est un
   courroux felon:
   Leur parler & crier, est de rugir &
   braire:
   Autre talame n’ont que le bois leur repair:
   Et devenus Lyons des autres redoutez
   Sont au char de Cybele attelez & dontez (my emphasis).

   Baif also wrote at least one épithalame. See Jean Antoine de Baif, “Atalante,” in Des Poemes, Vol. 2, Euvres en rime de Ian Antoine de Baif, ed. Charles Joseph Marty-Laveaux (1881; reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1965), 316.

7. Oeuvres complètes, 244.

8. Alice Berry, “L’Isle Médamothi: Rabelais's Itineraries of Anxiety (Quart Livre 2-4),” PMLA, 106, No. 5 (October, 1991).

9. Donald Frame does not translate this line in his edition; the translation is my own, as is that of the next quotation beginning with “et que.”

10. The pays de Lanternois does appear in Chapters 31 and 32 of the Cinquième Livre. It is generally accepted, however, that Rabelais did not write these chapters Consult Mireille Huchon, Rabelais grammairien. De l’histoire du texte aux problèmes d’authenticité, Etudes Rabelaisiennes 16 (Geneva: Droz, 1981), 474.

11. “… son amy Xenomanes leurs suffiroit, et d’abondant délibéroit passer par le pays de Lanternoys et là prendre quelque docte utile Lanterne laquelle leurs seroit pour ce voyage ce que feut la Sybille à Aeneas descendent ès champs Elisiens” (… his friend Xenomanes would suffice for them, and moreover was planning to pass through the country of Lanternland and there to pick up some learned and useful Lanterness, who would be to them for this trip what the sibyl was to Aeneas when he went down into the Elysian Fields.” 536, 397; ch. 47).

12. “Sus la pouppe de la seconde estoit hault enlevée une lanterne antiquaire, faicte industrieusement de pierre sphengitide et speculaire, denotant qu’ilz passeroient par Lanternoys” (On the stern of the second ship was raised aloft an antiquated lantern, meticulously wrought of transparent and reflecting stone, signifying that they would pass Lanterland.” 34, 437; Ch. 1).

13. Lucian's Lamptown episode is brief. The visitors have an unexplained uneasiness in remaining:

    “On landing we did not find any men at all, but a lot of lamps running about and loitering in the public square and at the harbour … They offered us no harm, but invited us to be their guests. We were afraid, however, and none of us ventured to eat a mouthful or close an eye … That night we stopped there, but on the next day we set sail and continued our voyage” (283).

14. The anonymous author or authors who eventually published the Cinquiesme Livre gave a prominent role to Lanternland. It is a gracious Lanterness who leads the crew to the Dive Bouteille. See Chapters 31 and 32.

15. An example of this last definition appears in Act I, scene 2 of La Farce de Maître Pathelin. The draper says to himself:

    Ils ne verront ni soleil ni lune
    Les écus qu’il va me donner!
    Car je vais, sans plus lanterner,
    Les cacher pour grossir le nombre
    De ceux qui déjà sont à l’ombre (my italics)!

    See R.-J. Berg, ed., La Farce de Maître Pathelin in Littérature française: Textes et Contextes, Vol. 1 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1994), p. 129.

16. Emile Telle, “L’Ile des Alliances (Quart Livre, chap. IX) ou l’Anti-Thélème,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 14 (1952), 159-175.

17. Richard M. Berrong, Every Man for Himself: Social Order and its Dissolution in Rabelais (Saratoga: Anma Libri, 1985).

18. Consult Erasmus's Encomium Matrimonii (Eulogy of Marriage) and Lefèvre d’Etaples's Commentaires sur les Epîtres de Saint Paul.

19. For a complete discussion of the influence of classical epics on Rabelais's chronicles (particularly Pantagruel), consult Gérard Défaux, Le Curieux, le glorieux et la sagesse du monde dans la première moitié du XVIème siècle: L’exemple de Panurge (Ulysse, Démosthène, Empédocle) (Lexington: French Forum, 1982).

20. Racine will later borrow the name Chicanou for one of his litigious characters, the bailiff Chicanneau, in his 1668 comedy Les Plaideurs.

21. Montaigne will later discuss those who are paid for their acts of self-flagellation in his Que le goust des biens et des maux depend en bonne partie de l’opinion que nous en avons:

    “Mais ne voit-on encore tous les jours le Vendredy S. en divers lieux un grand nombre d’hommes et femmes se battre jusques à se déchirer la chair et perçer jusques aux os? Cela ay-je veu souvent et sans enchantement; et disoit-on (car ils vont masquez) qu’il y en avoit, qui pour de l’argent entreprenoient en cela de garantir la religion d’autruy, par un mespris de la douleur d’autant plus grand que plus peuvent les éguillons de la dévotion que de l’avarice” (But do we not see every Good Friday in various places a large number of men and women beating themselves until they tear their flesh and cut it to the bone? That I have often seen, and without enchantment; and it was said that there were some (for they go masked) who for money undertook in this way to ensure other people's religion, with a contempt for pain all the greater than those of avarice. I, 14, 60, 41). As evidenced in the quotation, Montaigne, in contrast to Rabelais, is more intrigued than disgusted by those who beat themselves. His essay also contains implicit criticism of those who would pay for others to be beaten in their place.

22. According to Claude Gaignebet, Rabelais borrowed the Bringuenarilles episode from a chapter entitled “Comment les coqs, chapons et poulailles chantoient dedans le ventre de Bringuenarilles” found in the anonymous Navigations de Panurge. Claude Gaignebet, A Plus Hault Sens: L’Esotérisme spirituel et charnel de Rabelais, vol. 2 (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1986), 379.

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