The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance [Hardcover]

This 1991 book examines the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and the literature of the French Renaissance.This 1991 book examines the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and the literature of the French Renaissance by exploring the issues of gender, the body, and repression in many of the key literary texts of the period, including Sc?ve, Rabelais, Marguerite de Navarre, Ronsard, and Montaigne.This 1991 book examines the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and the literature of the French Renaissance by exploring the issues of gender, the body, and repression in many of the key literary texts of the period, including Sc?ve, Rabelais, Marguerite de Navarre, Ronsard, and Montaigne.This is the first wide-ranging theoretical study to investigate how sexuality underlies literary production in the French Renaissance. It examines the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and French Renaissance literature, and explores the issues of gender, the body, and repression through detailed readings of key literary texts.Preface; Introduction; Part I. Phetorics of Gender: 1. Pernette du Guillet and a voice of one's own; 2. Rabelais and the representation of male subjectivity: the Rondibilis episode as case study; 3. Verba erotica: Marguerite de Navarre and the rhetoric of silence; 4. Pedagogical graffiti and the rhetoric of conceit; 5. Montaigne's family romance; Part II. Figures of the Body: A. Disfiguring the Feminine: 6. Architecture of the Utopian body: the blasons of Marot and Ronsard; 7. Fictions of the body and the gender of the text in Ronsard's 1552 Amours; B. The text as body: 8. My body, my text: Montaigne and the rhetoric of self-portraiture; Part III. Allegories of Repression: 9. Maurice Sc?ve: the rhetoric of dream and the language of love; 10. Sexuality and the political unconscious in Rabelais' Quatre Livre: three case studies: A. Pro-logos: excess and the golden mean; B. Rabelais' comedy of cruelty: the chicanous episode; C. Rabelais in ló,