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PARTISAN REVIEW
in connection with
his
plan of marrying, sets forth the methods of
allaying the all-too-powerful sex urge; First, immoderate wine-drink–
ing; secondly, certain medicaments; thirdly, steady physical labor;
fourthly, eager study. Each of these four methods is expounded over
several pages with a superabundance of medical and humanistic
erudition through which enumerations, quotations, and anecdotes
shower down like rain. Fifthly, Rondibilis goes on, the sexual act
itself.... Stop, says Panurge, that's what I was waiting for, that's the
method for me, I leave the others to anyone who wants to use them.
Yes, says Frere Jean, who has been listening, Brother Scyllino,
Prior of Saint Victor's near Marseille, had a name for that method,
he called it mortifying the flesh.... The whole thing is a wild joke,
but Rabelais has filled it with his succession of ever-changing con–
ceits which purposely confuse the distinctions between styles and
disciplines. It is the same with the grotesque defense of Judge Bridoye
(chs. 39-42 of the same Book), who carefully prepared his cases,
postponed them again and again, and then decided them by a cast
of the dice; and who nevertheless for forty years pronounced nothing
but wise and just judgments. In his speech, senile drivel is mixed with
subtly ironic wisdom, the most wonderful anecdotes are told, the
whole of legal terminology is poured out on the reader in a grotesque
cascade of words, every obvious or absurd opinion is supported by
a welter of comical quotations from Roman Law and the glossarists;
it is a fireworks display of wit, of juridical and human experience, of
contemporary satire and contemporary manners and morals, an edu–
cation in laughter, in rapid shifts between a multiplicity of viewpoints.
As
a last example, let us take the scene on board ship, when Panurge
bargains with the sheepmonger Dindenault over a wether (Book IV,
cbs. 6-8). This is perhaps the most effective scene between two char–
acters in Rabelais. The owner of the flock of sheep, the merchant Din–
denault from the Saintonge, is a choleric and pompous person, but
at the same time he is endowed with the crafty, idiomatic, and
subtle wit which is natural to almost all of Rabelais' personages. At
their very first encounter he has fooled the Eulenspiegel Panurge to
the top of his bent; and, but for the intervention of the ship's
captain and Pantagruel, they would have come to blows. Later, ap–
parently reconciled, as they sit with the others, drinking wine,
Panurge again asks
him
to sell him one of his sheep. Then, for page
