SOURCE: “Rabelais and the Monsters of Antiphysis,” in Modern Language Notes, Vol. 110, No. 5, December 1995, pp. 1017-42.

In the essay below, Defaux maintains that in the battle between humanism and scholasticism in the sixteenth century, Rabelais was the most powerful and effective advocate for humanism.

“Cy n’entrez pas, hypocrites, bigotz, Vieux matagotz, marmiteux, boursouflez, Torcoulx, badaux, plus que n’estoient les Gotz Ni Ostrogotz, precurseurs des magotz, Haires, cagotz, caffars empantouflez …” 

Rabelais, Gargantua

“Pourveu que cettuy cy frappe, il ne luy chaut combien il se descouvre.” 

Montaigne, Essais, III, 8

Fundamentally, the form taken by the sixteenth-century “querelle des Anciens et des Modernes,”¹ that is the struggle we have all heard about between humanism on one side and scholasticism on the other, is that of a “Battle of the Arts.” It focuses primarily on language and the relative role and importance of the artes sermocinales of the trivium, Grammar...