Gargantua and Pantagruel | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 45 pages of analysis & critique of Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Gargantua and Pantagruel | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 45 pages of analysis & critique of Gargantua and Pantagruel.
This section contains 12,388 words
(approx. 42 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Gerard Ponziano Lavatori

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

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

What strikes a reader most about patterns of communication in Rabelais is their repeated deviance. There is a constant disregard for the limits to which signs function effectively in communication and little evidence of a clear distinction between levels of meaning or significance. The problem of interpretation is thematic throughout the works and memorably coined in the metaphor of the “substantial marrow” of the prologue to Gargantua. There the reader is instructed to pass beyond the superficial meaning of the narrator's discourse, the literal meaning, as a dog would break through the shell of a bone to extract its marrow, a more sublime...

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This section contains 12,388 words
(approx. 42 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Gerard Ponziano Lavatori
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Critical Essay by Gerard Ponziano Lavatori from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.