Rabelais: A Critical Study in Prose Fiction

A study of Rabelais (?1494–1553) as a literary artist giving special attention to the form and language of his fiction. Coleman uses a genuinely literary approach, using some of the techniques of stylistic analysis. She avoids the two extremes of approaching Rabelais either as a solemn sixteenth-century humanist who expressed profound truths in simple allegories or as a mere joker, drunk with words. Instead she sees him as finding a particular form - Menippean satire - in which he could ach...