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Hi Calvin,
Thanks for this response! If you send me an e-mail at adam.husain@chch.ox.ac.uk I can send the electronic copies to you.
Lots to think about here, but I’m particularly interested in what you mentioned about boredom in the reading of Princesse de Cleves, and in the French tradition more generally. Perhaps the most famous comment on boredom in Proust is that of Barthes in Plaisir du texte: ‘Bonheur de Proust: On ne saute jamais les mêmes passages’ (‘Pleasure of [reading] Proust: we never skip the same passages’). Still, it’s not really discussed as a readerly experience of interest by any Proust critic (that I know of).
I’m interest to hear you suggest Proust’s narrator seems aware of the reader’s discomfort or boredom in Swann in Love. I can think of moments in Combray where it almost seems as if there is self-parody in the description of Bergotte going on for too long pontificating in his prose, and there is one or two bits in the final volume. In Swann’s Love, however, nothing really comes to mind!
Hi Calvin,
Interesting question. That Screech should be dismissive would be typical of him — a more hard-headed, historical kind of critic, compared to, say, Bakhtin. How you account for Pantagruel’s changes on size will depend upon the type of literary criticism that appeals to you. From the little reading I have done on this, size-change is certainly a trope, not only in fairytale but in classical texts (one source mentions Lucian’s True History as a possible influence). However, is that enough to explain the phenomenon for you? It sounds like you would prefer to develop a more philosophical and (perhaps) creative kind of reading.
The locus classicus for a discussion of the mouth chapter is in Mimesis (1968) by Auerbach. This book is, like that of Bakhtin, one of those comets of literary criticism. It considers the nature of ‘mimesis’ across the Western canon. Auerbach’s chapter on Rabelais is on this mouth passage, and he sees it as a key moment of development for literature, since ‘ Rabelais’s entire effort is directed toward playing with things and with the multiplicity of their possible aspects’. It is further discussed here: ‘Hampton, Timothy. “‘Comment a Nom’: Humanism and Literary Knowledge in Auerbach and Rabelais.” Representations (Berkeley, Calif.) 119, no. 1 (2012): 37–59.’
To someone like Screech, this kind of interpretation would seem grandiose.
A less grandiose, but perhaps less helpful interpretation is in ‘Oliver, Douglas. Poetry and Narrative in Performance. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989’. He ends a whole chapter on the mouth with: ‘If we ask where we are at this moment, we ‘are’, as readers, wherever Alcofribas’, the author’s, imagination is. And the ‘there’ of the story is where the other characters including Pantagruel are, seen from the outside. So at this swallowing of the subjective by the objective pole, the ‘here’ and ‘there’ fuse together too. We are unsure who is ‘I’, since we are active inside Pantagruel; we are unsure what size we are; and we are unsure where we are: in France, on the tongue of the giant, or in Utopia outside’ (157).
It is not together all that useful to say that Rabelais’ remains inexplicable here, but perhaps it is the most accurate assessment! If you’re interested in either of the studies mentioned, I’m very happy to send over electronic copies, which I have.
Finally, to my mind, I’m not sure Pantagruel does get more ridiculous as he grows up. I think the normal reading is that this is a Bildungsroman, and he ends up becoming educated into a Renaissance prince, just as Gargantua sets up Theleme Abbey. But interested to hear if you find the reverse to be true.
Ah, interesting! Turns out I was thinking of this one by Chardin, in the Louvre.
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010059561Singe-peintre something of a trope in the 18th century.
This video explains a bit more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk2Iv9rqBiw.Monkey barbershops are new to me though!
It seems a long lasting topos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singerie).
In the references here, the book by Bert Schepers ‘Monkey Madness in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp’ seems worth buying just for the title…I suppose a more modern version would be the famous poker dogs, which still do seem genuinely amusing, at least to me (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogs_Playing_Poker).
