Three Interpretations of the French Renaissance

Whatever chronological limits be determined for the French Renaissance, its history, scholarship, and literature are at least characterized by a clearly discernible attitude which distinguishes them from the work of preceding centuries. This atmosphere is perhaps best expressed by Rabelais in the letter from Gargantua to Pantagruel. Gargantua writes: ‘Maintenant toutes disciplines sont restitutes, les langues instaurées…'. He claims with enthusiasm that ‘Tout le monde est plein de gens savants, de precepteurs très doctes … . Je voy les brigans, les boureaulx, les avanturiers, les palefreniers de maintenant plus doctes que les docteurs et prescheurs de mon temps’, and concludes: ‘Somme queje voy un abysme de science.’