THE WORLD IN PANTAGRUEL'S MOUTH
685
basically anti-Christian; for him, the man who follows his nature is
good, and natural life, be it of men or things, is good; we should not
even need the express confirmation of this conviction which he gives
us in the constitution of his Abbey of Theleme, for it speaks from
every line of his work. Consentaneous with this is the fact that his
animalistic treatment of mankind no longer has for its keynote, as
does the corresponding realism of the declining Middle Ages, the
wretchedness and perishableness of the body and of earthly things in
general; in Rabelais, animalistic realism has acquired a new meaning,
diametrically opposed to medieval animalistic realism-that of the
vitalistic-dynamic triumph of the physical body and its functions. In
Rabelais, there is no longer any Original Sin or any Last Judgment,
and thus no metaphysical fear of death.
As
a part of nature, man
rejoices in his breathing life, his bodily functions, and his intellectual
powers, and, like Nature's other creatures, he suffers natural dis–
solution. The breathing life of men and nature calls forth all Rabelais'
love, his thirst for knowledge and his power of verbal representation;
it makes him a poet, for he is a poet, and indeed a lyric poet, even
though he lacks sentiment.
It
is triumphant earthly life which calls
forth his realistic and super-realistic mimesis. And that is completely
anti-Christian, just as it is so opposed to the range of ideas which the
animalistic realism of the later Middle Ages arouses in us, that it
is precisely in the medieval traits of his style that his alienation from
the Middle Ages is most strikingly displayed; their purpose and func–
tion have changed completely.
This rise of man to wholeness in the natural world, this triumph
of the animal and the physical, offers us the opportunity to remark
in more detail how .ambiguous and therefore subject to misconstruc–
tion is the word individualism, which is often, and certainly not un–
justifiably, used in connection with the Renaissance. There is no
doubt that, in Rabelais' view of the world, in which all possibilities are
open, which plays with every aspect, man is freer in his thinking, in
realizing his instincts and his wishes, than he was before. But is he
therefore more individualistic?
It
is not easy to say. At least he is less
closely confined to his own idiosyncrasy, he is more protean, more
inclined to slip into someone else's shoes; and his general, super–
individual traits, especially his animal and instinctive traits, are
greatly emphasized. Rabelais has created very strongly marked and
