Francois Rabelais: Medical Humanist. (360G-Wellcome-094047_Z_10_Z)

The project will lead to a monograph: Fran ois Rabelais: Medical Humanist. The primary texts for consideration are Pantagruel, Gargantua, Le Tiers Livre, Le Quart Livre, Le Cinquiesme Livre, despite the latter s contested authorship, and correspondence such as Rabelais s letters from Italy. The first section of the book will analyse the presentation of various medical fields in these texts. Account will be taken of the extent to which Rabelais reflects Renaissance thought and what deliberate mis representation he introduces. Evidence will be taken from Classical, Arabic and Renaissance medical sources to support the analysis and from more modern theories of the body such as those proposed by Bakhtin, Kristeva, Laqueur, Foucault and Merleau-Ponty. The second part of the project will address health promotion via pharmacology, humour and literature as therapy. In the dedicatory epistle to the Quart Livre Rabelais explicitly states how the writer administers to the sick reader in the same w ay that a doctor attends a patient, and how the creation of art fosters health. Theories of humour, studies of doctor-patient relationships and of the therapeutic value of the arts will underpin an investigation of how Rabelais uses his works to encourage physical and mental wellbeing in his readers.