French comic fiction: “food for thought”: The theme of food, drink and feasting in the following 16th/17th century French books: Rabelais’ Gargantua, Cyrano de Bergerac’s Voyage dans la lune and Charles Sorel’s Histoire comique de Francion.

Comic fiction was given a marginal position in French literary history for centuries. However, the ‘histoires comiques’ were brought back into critical focus in the 20^th century and new light was thrown on their satirical qualities and unique role as social commentaries. With the theme of food, drink and feasting as a starting point the present analysis will look at the development of French comic fiction in the 16^th and 1^th centuries, focusing on Rabelais’ Gargantua, Sorel’s Histoire comique de Francion and Cyrano de Bergerac’s Voyage dans la lune. After a brief look at the historical background the essay will analyse the three texts individually and specific reference will be made to Bakhtin and his theory of carnival culture. Furthermore, it will examine the concepts of Menippean satire and the picaresque novel. Finally, it will discuss the literary utopia and the idea of free will as seen in Rabelais and the Abbey of Thélème.
16^th and 17^th century France was a place of change. The country was developing into a leading power in Europe but this growth must be seen against a background of religious and political conflicts and civil war. The whole continent was dominated by a series of religious wars in the aftermath of the Reformation; in France, The Wars of Religion were fought in the later half of the 16th century. This lengthy conflict between Catholics and Huguenots came to an end in 1598 with the issue of the Edict of Nantes, which granted rights to the Huguenots but also ensured the continual power of the Catholic Church. Protestants and Catholics were fighting each other in neighbouring countries in the Thirty Years War, which caused great devastation in Europe. The power of the French Catholic Church went hand in hand with the growing authority of the monarchy in the first half of the 17^th century. The opposition to the crown grew and resulted in civil war, the ‘Fronde’, from 1648 to 1653. The opposition was crushed and the crown emerged from the conflict determined to suppress further opposition and establish itself as the absolute power in the country.
The 16th century was the time of the French Renaissance: a time of intellectual prosperity, humanism and social change. The emerging nation states in Europe were shaking off the ‘darkness’ of the Middle Ages and rediscovering the glory of the Antiquity. Gradually, society was moving away from the feudalism of the Middle Ages and new structures were emerging, new social classes developing. Humanism turned its focus on the individual and his unique place in nature. Due to this ‘discovery of the individual’, the Renaissance is often referred to as Early Modernity. (In Western thought, the emphasis on the individual would continue to grow until the 19th century, when Darwin, Marx and Freud, among others, would introduce theories that destabilised the individual and questioned the place of mankind in nature). The Renaissance was an intellectual and artistic period that contained many, sometimes conflicting, elements. On the one hand, people looked back to Ancient Greece and Rome in their study of classical texts and languages and found their ideals there. On the other hand, they looked forward; new developments can be seen in science, philosophy and literature. National languages were developing and the vernacular was gradually taking over from Latin as the main written language. At the same time, elements from the Middle Ages were still present. In literature, the genre of the novel began to take form.
The many different facets of Renaissance culture can be seen in the writing of François Rabelais. Gargantua was published in 1534; it is an exuberant, burlesque work that tells the story of the giant Gargantua and his experiences in the world. The book has been widely discussed and commented on and is often seen as an expression of the ‘carnivalesque’ folk-culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but also as a satirical social commentary and critique. The theme of food, drink and feasting is prominent. Rabelais raises his glass to the reader already in the prologue, which starts with the words “noble boozers” and ends with “do not forget to drink my health for the favour, and I’ll return you the toast, post-haste” and proclaims that he never spent more time on writing the book than he did on eating and drinking. The tone is set. The narrative is full of feasts; there is an abundance of food and drink that is associated with a joy of life. When Gargantua is born, he cries out “Drink! Drink!” and his fondness for the bottle does not diminish as he grows older. In his article ‘Rabelais’ Barrel’, André Winandy points out that “the narrator brings the entire narrative under the sign of bottle and drink”. He regards the drinking in Gargantua as a ‘Dionysian intoxication’ of gaiety and laughter. The Dionysian aspect provides a link to the Antiquity and may be seen as an example of the reverence for the classical world that was so important in the Renaissance. More often, the drink and feasting is considered an element of carnival culture. The world is temporarily turned upside-down and there are no rules that can temper the enjoyment. Everything is exaggerated: Gargantua, who was born during a sumptuous feast, craves an excessive amount of food. The theme of food and drink in Gargantua is unrestrained and nothing is consumed in moderation. Michel Jeanneret sees the unrestrained eating in opposition to the classical symposium, in which the eating and drinking is controlled and contained. The most common example of this is Plato’s Symposium. In contrast, the carnival feasts of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance belong to a popular tradition, in which the table talk has been moved from high to low, from the philosophical to the material. Jeanneret claims that the feast can inspire a breaking of literary rules. This is an interesting theory with regards to Rabelais: one may argue that content is closely connected to form here; both the characters and the narrative refuse to obey the established norms modelled on classical ideals. During and after the Renaissance, the novel gradually moved away from the classical heroic epics and medieval romances and developed into its own literary genre. Gargantua is generally considered to be an early example of the genre and a book that experiments with literary rules, or rather opposes the idea of fixed rules. Similarly, the abundant feasting promotes freedom: ‘everything goes’.
One of the most influential theoretical works on Rabelais and carnival culture is Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his World, published in 1965. To Bakhtin, the ‘carnivalesque’ is an important aspect of life in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The carnival represents an inversion of the regular order; the world is temporarily turned upside-down and social boundaries are suppressed. The carnival is seen as the popular, anti-authoritarian and humorous alternative to the official culture at the time. According to Bakhtin, Rabelais’ writing is essentially ‘carnivalesque’; the carnival spirit is part of its literary structure. The exaggerations, the laughter, and the feasts are examples of the expression of the carnival spirit in the text, which can also be seen in the experimentation with the literary genre. As mentioned above, Gargantua does not conform to the established literary conventions at the time. It expands or changes its role; hence the carnival provides freedom and new possibilities to both social and literary roles.
The aesthetic of ‘grotesque realism’ or the ‘material bodily principle’ is an important concept in Bakhtin’s theory and refers to the material functions of the body such as eating, drinking and defecation. These are central images in Rabelais’ texts. ‘Grotesque realism’ celebrates the bodily elements of popular culture and presents them as an alternative to the dominant aesthetic of official culture. The ‘grotesque’ elements are exaggerated and wild, just like the carnival laughter, which Bakhtin describes as ambivalent: it is happy and mocking at the same time. Similarly, ‘grotesque realism’ represents a duality: degradation, in this context referring to the vulgarisation of the ideal and spiritual, coexists with renewal and change. The carnival is seen in opposition to the official social order, which is static and constant. The carnival, however, symbolises change, or ‘becoming’. To Bakhtin, the feasting of the carnival exemplifies this process of change and renewal. It is different from the official feasts, which reinforce established hierarchies and norms rather than challenge them. In light of Bakhtin’s theory, therefore, the abundant feasting in Gargantua can be seen as the ultimate symbol of liberation and freedom achieved temporarily in the carnival.
Bakhtin’s theory has been highly influential in the studies of Renaissance literature and Rabelais in particular. However, he has also been criticised and several contemporary theorists object to his view of the carnival. It has been argued that the carnival, instead of challenging the established order, in fact reinforces it. The suspension of hierarchies is only temporary and the social inversion, by its fleeting nature, highlights and reinforces the hierarchical norms. The carnival has been described as a ‘safety-valve’ of the official culture; people were allowed to feel free for a day on the condition that they returned to their place in the hierarchy afterwards. John Parkin points out that the medieval culture is often seen as conservative rather than progressive, contrary to the point of view of Bakhtin. Furthermore, Bakhtin has been accused of idealising the carnival and popular culture whilst ignoring other, more humanist or satirical aspects of Renaissance literature. For example, he does not regard Rabelais as a satirist, which has been disputed by theorists such as Parkin. Bakhtin, as any other literary theorist, is not objective; he is a product of his time as much as the writers he studies, and he found elements in Rabelais’ work that particularly suited his Marxist worldview but was perhaps too ready to ignore the more intellectual and scholarly aspects of Gargantua. However, he started a critical dialogue that is still ongoing today.
Another ‘histoire comique’ that is regarded as a precursor to the modern French novel is Charles Sorel’s Histoire comique de Francion. The first edition was published in 1623 and two later versions were published in 1626 and 1633 in which the author had made several changes. This is generally explained as Sorel’s attempt to remove some of the most ‘immoral’ passages from the text for fear of repercussions. Indeed, it contains controversial elements that writers had to be careful stating too clearly at the time, for example a criticism of the Catholic Church. The libertine qualities of the text may also be a reason for the changes in the later editions. The libertine movement emerged in the aftermath of the Wars of Religion and in addition to the ‘depravity’ generally associated with it, one of the movement’s trademarks was its anti-clericalism. When Richelieu came to power in 1624, the libertines were persecuted heavily. Histoire comique de Francion tells the story of a young nobleman and his adventures in the world. It is reminiscent of Gargantua in its depiction of food, drink and feasting, although the theme is not as central to the text. Food is generally associated with pleasure and is something to be enjoyed in abundance. Consequently, the lack of good food is a source of pain for Francion: in Book III, the young Francion is being educated at a strict Jesuit college and food, or a lack thereof, is being used as a means of suppression. The teachers preach moderation: “Il faisoit tousjours a table un petit sermon sur l’abstinence, qui s’addressoit particulierement a moy: il alleguoit Ciceron qui dit, qu’il ne faut manger que pour vivre, non pas vivre pour manger”. Francion finds it difficult to endure this. As the story unfolds he is given several opportunities to make up for his earlier abstinence; in Book VII, he attends the libertine feast at his friend Raymond’s, where drink is bounteous and the table is laid out with the most delicious food he has ever seen: “… une longue table, qui fut incontinent chargé de tant de diverses sortes d’animaux, qu’il sembloit que l’on eut pris tous ceux de la terre, pour les manger lá en un jour”. Food and drink are central to the enjoyment of life and become symbols of freedom and opposition to authorities. Another reference to drink in the book is the dream sequence in Book III, in which Francion dreams that he is floating on water, naked, inside a barrel. The barrel is a device that returns on several occasions in the book, and Jean Serroy sees it as a symbol of Dionysian joy and pleasure. The barrel is referred to again in Book VII by Raymond when he praises the act of drinking. Francis Assaf regards the barrel, and hence the eating and drinking, as a carnivalesque element, which has also been noted by Bakhtin in his reading of the novel.
The theme of food and drink in Cyrano de Bergerac’s Voyage dans la lune is less prominent than in Gargantua or Histoire comique de Francion and presented in quite a different light. Voyage dans la lune, also known as the first part of L’Autre Monde or LesEtats et empires de la lune, was published in 1657, a century after Rabelais’ novel. If one shares the view that food is a sign encompassing more elaborate ideological, political and cultural concepts, there has been a noticeable change. Whereas the representation of food in Rabelais’ and Sorel’s texts was copious and unrestrained, that on the moon is quite the opposite. Voyage dans la lune is the story of a young man, Cyrano, who travels to the moon; it is a world in which everything is turned upside-down, including the culinary habits. In fact, the inhabitants do not eat at all: they dine on the smells of food. Thus, the material element of food and defecation that was so pronounced in Rabelais is nearly removed altogether, and as a result people are much healthier: “Aussi les personnes de ce monde-ci jouissent d’une santé bien moins interrompue et plus vigoureuse, á cause que la nourriture n’engendre presque point d’excréments, qui sont l’origine de quasi toutes les maladies”. This is probably not so much a negation of the principles of carnival or popular culture as a means of turning the world around and thereby showing the relativity of social customs. Another famous passage in the book that relates to food is the burlesque “éloge du chou”, the eulogy of the cabbage. One of the moon inhabitants explains that he does not wish to eat anything that is capable of experiencing pain, animals or vegetables. Socrates’ demon, who accompanies Cyrano on his tour of the moon, accepts this point of view and launches into a praise of the cabbage: “… ce chou don’t vous parlez n’est-il pas autant créature de Dieu que vous?” Man is not any more important than the cabbage in the eyes of God. What may seem like a rather extreme version of vegetarianism to the reader of today is generally described as a critique of the central position in the universe that was given to mankind at the time. Hence, the passage of the cabbage serves the purpose of ridiculing human arrogance. In Voyage dans la lune Cyrano de Bergerac is questioning established points of view; among other things he attacks religion and the authority of the Bible, the geocentric model (which had been challenged but was yet to be fully overturned), and the idea of a limited universe. Published only a few years after the end of the civil war of the ‘Fronde’ and the Thirty Years War, the novel attacks the rules of war, too; the wars that are being fought on the moon are more reasonable and impartial than those on earth. The comic narrative is used to produce a serious social comment.
Comic fiction is a literary genre that has been offered less attention in French literary history than for example the great tragedies. It is, however, a genre that has a unique place in the tradition of social commentary and critique. In his study of 17th century comic fiction, Jean Serroy offers several explanations for this tendency to give the ‘histoires comiques’ a marginal literary status. The ‘forgotten writers’ of the 17^th century such as Sorel and Cyrano were rediscovered in the 20^th century and this changed the view of 17^th century literature and the development of the novel. One of the main reasons for the inferior position assigned to comic fiction is, Serroy argues, its refusal to conform to literary ideals. In the 17^th century, the heroic novel was still the dominant narrative form of prose fiction, and texts such as Histoire comique de Francion and Voyage dans la lune did not fit into the existing pattern. Serroy suggests that the freedom of comic form and its potential for social criticism attracted the ‘free spirits’ of the time. They wanted to experiment freely with their subject matter and this was the perfect form for it. By using a literary form that was considered secondary, the author could express controversial ideas more freely and indeed hide the most obvious critique behind jokes and exaggerations. This allowed for a new complexity in the novel. Although Serroy focuses on 17th century literature, much of the same can be said of the satirical work of the 16th century and especially the Menippean satire.
The Menippean satire became extremely popular in the Renaissance. The Roman satirist Lucian is often regarded as a representative of the genre, which saw a revival in the Renaissance, largely through the renewed popularity of Lucian. The Menippean satire can be difficult to define because of its paradoxical nature but it has been described as anti-intellectual and critical of the humanist project. “Menippean satire is a genre both for and about scholars; it is an immensely learned form that is at the same time paradoxically anti-intellectual”. Some humanists used the Menippean satire to criticise decadent forms of humanism as the movement became more specialised and self-satisfied. It is a genre that mixes styles; it combines humour with philosophy, verse with prose. According to Jean Lafond, other characteristics are the dream narrative, as can be seen in the Histoire comique de Francion, the feast, and the voyage, especially of the celestial kind, which is exemplified both in Francion and Voyage dans la lune.
Why did this form of satire become so popular? As W. Scott Blanchard points out, the Menippean satire challenges literary boundaries and thereby insists on the transitory nature of form and conventions. At a time when France was ravaged by religious wars and experienced massive political change it is natural for a questioning of established norms to develop, in literature as well as politics. Indeed, the use of satire offered writers a disguise for political criticism. Furthermore, in its focus on the material and vulgar it opposes the classical idea of decorum that became a norm in the Renaissance and the 17^th century, especially in France. Bakhtin, in his study of Rabelais, saw the Menippean satire as a “subversion of both the heroic values associated with more elite forms of literature and of the hierarchical organization of both classical aesthetics and the social order that classical aesthetics mirror”. As has been pointed out by many of Bakhtin’s critics, the Menippean satire, however subversive, is also an elitist form. It can be described as subversion taking place from within; in order to understand the criticism of classical and humanist ideas the reader must already be familiar with them. Whether this is always true of subversive literature is another debate but an interesting aspect in Bakhtin’s view of the Menippean satire is that he sees it as a precursor to the modern novel. This form of satire appears to be a ‘modern’ genre in terms of its disregard for form and its negation of absolute systems. Blanchard suggests that a Menippean influence can be found in later writers such as Nietzsche. The relativistic aspect that is present in the Menippean satire would become prevailing in the 20^th century.
Another genre that is relevant in the discussion of comic fiction in the 16^th and 17^th centuries is the picaresque novel. The genre originated in Spain in the 16^th century and usually depicts the adventures of a charming rogue trying to get along in a corrupt world. The structure is episodic and often takes the form of a journey. The adventurous hero finds himself in various dangerous situations from which he typically escapes by using his wit. The genre is considered important in the development of the modern novel. Both Histoire comique de Francion and Voyage dans la lune have been characterised as picaresque novel and Jean Serroy considers Francion to be central in the early formation of the novelistic genre. Like the Mineppean satire, the picaresque novel is a form that allows the author a freedom to experiment with rules and thereby expand the genre. Some explain this by pointing to the picaresque novel’s realistic narrative: “Picaresque literature is marked by its proximity to social or historical fact. For this reason it is less conventional than other types, broader and vaguer in its limits”. Not all theorists agree that realism is intrinsic to the picaresque novel but the subject matter was markedly different from that of the prevailing heroic novels of the time and with the lower-class hero a whole new level of society entered the literary domain. This opened up new possibilities for the novel and allowed established boundaries to be challenged, not only with regards to subject matter but also form.
The writers of comic fiction in France in the 16^th and 17^th centuries shared a wish to experiment; they were ‘free spirits’ with a disregard for established literary and social rules, as has been shown above. They used the literary form of satire as a means of criticising the contemporary social, political or religious systems. Another literary form that should be mentioned in this context is the utopia, which depicts an ideal civilisation, often the direct opposite to the society in which the author lived. The utopia, by describing an imaginary world, throws a new light on the customs of contemporary society. It functions as an indirect social critique and hence was a logical choice for writers who wished to avoid persecution by the authorities. The criticism was hidden behind a description of an imaginary world and could be ‘excused’ as a mere fantasy. In Gargantua, Rabelais constructed his utopia, the Abbey of Thélème. The abbey lets the inhabitants act upon their free will in all matters. The main rule of the abbey is that there are no rules: “All their life was regulated not by laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their free will and pleasure”. The humanist educational ideal is also promoted at the abbey: “So nobly were they instructed that there was not a man or woman among them who could not read, write, sing, play musical instruments, speak five or six languages, and compose in them both verse and prose”. The Abbey of Thélème is generally considered a criticism of the monastery systems of the time but is also another example of form and content being linked together in the text: the aim is a freedom from rules, literary, religious and social. The utopia would remain popular with writers in the 17^th and 18^th centuries: a utopian influence can be seen in Voyage dans la lune as well as in Voltaire’s Candide.
The ‘histoires comiques’ evolve but some of the similarities remain. There is a line of French writers in the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries from Rabelais to Voltaire that choose comic fiction as their preferred form of subversion. The comic tradition is of great importance in French literary history, not only because of its role in the development of the modern novel, but also because of its controversial nature. Comic fiction produced some of the most important works of social criticism in France. One may find a deeper knowledge beneath the comic surface and, as Rabelais states in the prologue to Gargantua, diligent reading will teach the reader about matters to do with religion, public and private life.