The Design of Rabelais's Pantagruel.

Edwin Duval's exegesis of Rabelais's Pantagruel is a brilliant and painstakingly researched piece of work. Rich in insights, it is consistently erudite, dense, generous, even humorous at times; always contributive, it is indeed an award-winning book. Superbly organized, cogently and powerfully argued, written gracefully and with conviction, Duval's revolutionary Design tramples roundly in the dust any lingering notions of structural disorder, misshapenness, and improvisation ("un livre improvise sans plan bien ferme" [Saulnier]), lack of intensity and interest (a "rather dull novel" [Screech]), and other criticisms frequently ascribed to Rabelais's first book. Sic transit gloria mundi. Although critical work of the past 25 years has shown how indefensible these views are, Duval goes much further than anyone else - and further than I would have thought possible - in demonstrating that the Pantagruel is a meticulously crafted and uncannily plotted creative masterpiece, one whose grand design makes of it one of the great evangelical texts of the period. The "vague hunch" (ix) Duval once had about the "overarching design" (the expression comes up more than once) of the Pantagruel is now irrefutably demonstrated and will guide all our future readings of Rabelais.

In six jam-packed and thought-provoking chapters, with introduction, epilogue, and copious notes, Duval outlines Rabelais's "master plan" (xiv) for the composition of a book whose twin towers will be the constituent elements of epic and Christian humanism. Seen in this light, the book's various episodes and their meanings "form a harmonious complex of self-consistent, mutually reinforcing strands" (124). By intertwining, so to speak, the epic tradition, in particular Vergil's Aeneid, with the Bible, especially the New Testament, Rabelais launches his young gigantic prince on a comic, eye-opening journey of exploits, with the preordained mission of redeeming his fratricidal brethren, thereby fulfilling his heroic and Christlike destiny. Thus, by fusing the heroic and the evangelical, Rabelais writes "a heroic gospel, or an evangelical epic" (11), one in which Pantagruel is charged with the eradication of fratricide and the reinstatement of caritas and the brotherhood of humankind, the bedrock of Christian ethics. I realize how inadequate and reductive this summary might appear, but it is not possible to do justice to the complexity of the argument and its demonstration in a brief review.

Every reader will be convinced by the depth of Duval's knowledge of the text, by his wealth of corroborating detail and by his cogent and forceful analysis. Indeed, one learns something new on every page, not only about the thrust and design of the whole but also about the constitution, ramifications, and meaning of its parts. He anticipates and meets head-on possible counter-arguments and is willing to accept defeat if he is unable to explain the linkage and subordination of all elements to the "overarching design," including the work's highly prized comic texture. I was particularly taken by the following list of contributions to our knowledge of the text: the allusive complex that binds the Chroniques and the Bible in the prologue; the work in its totality as "a kind of Gospel and Revelation" (10), what I would call comic secular Scripture; Panurge's role as comes and disciple; the messianic aspects of the ring episode; the all-important rewriting of Genesis in order to emphasize violence and fratricide rather than pride as the Original Sin, thus transposing "salvational history from a divine to a strictly human plane" (26); the quest for a pax universalis; Loup Garou as Cain's fictional counterpart and, along with Anarche, rapacious embodiment of the homo homini lupus proverb; the organization of chapters in the "sapience cycle"; Gargantua's famous letter as a subversive text and its centrality for the structuring and outcome of the whole; Pantagruel's reverse travels to various universities; Solomon and Pantagruel as kings, wise men, and judges with regard to the Baisecul / Humevesne episode; Panurge's invented languages; Thaumaste as tempter and trickster and his defeat as trompeur trompe at the hands of Panurge; the political dimension of the text in general and specifically with regard to Epistemon's excursion in Hell; the principle of inversion; the corporate metaphor and its significance for chs. 32-33; the call to action "on the part of the Christian citizen-reader" (134); et j'en passe.

Duval's tour de force is immensely absorbing, and his book requires careful and repeated reading. Various favorite critical notions are demolished and others are seriously challenged. Not everyone will be comfortable with what appears to be an airtight reading, leaving little or no room for maneuver. No book is ever perfect or definitive (I would quibble over young Pantagruel as "mere brute" (42), the place of Panurge in the caritas construct, the urge to place everything on the proverbial procrustean bed, and a few other things that will lead all of us to engage one another a la Rabelais within the community of scholars we represent), but Duval's study comes as close to perfection as one can reasonably expect in terms of the limits and goals it sets for itself. Chapeau bas!

RAYMOND C. LA CHARITE University of Kentucky, Lexington