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Article: Rabelais's unreadable books. (Francois Rabelais)
- Article from:
- Renaissance Quarterly
- Article date:
- December 22, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 The Renaissance Society of America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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About twenty-five years ago, in the lobby of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, a friend introduced me to the already legendary Eugenie Droz. As kindly as her rather haughty manner permitted, she asked me what I was working on, and when I replied "Rabelais" she said condescendingly: "Oh, do you think there is any more work to be done on Rabelais?"
In the generation since that conversation a good deal of work has been done on Rabelais, much of it interesting and some of it new and exciting. M. A. Screech and his followers, most notably Jean Ceard, Edwin Duval, and Florence Weinberg, have greatly expanded our understanding of Rabelais the Evangelical Christian ...