Dolet, Rabelais, and Paré: literature and medicine beyond dissection

Abstract

This article attends to the act of speaking after death as it is explored by Étienne Dolet, François Rabelais, and surgeon Ambroise Paré. Dolet addresses a poem to Rabelais in 1538 – the year of Rabelais’s public dissection in Lyon – imagining a dissected corpse that is mute, in contrast to a garrulous, ineffective anatomist. This poetic consideration of voice and authority informs a new reading of Epistemon's resurrection in Pantagruel, where the exemplary value of Epistemon's testimony is reconsidered in relation to the overlooked medical feat of this episode, Panurge's suturing of Epistemon's neck. The article ends with a case history by Paré in which he sutured a patient’s slit throat well enough for him to speak. Speaking with the dead is reconfigured from rhetorical flourish to medical fact, from poetry to fictional narrative to medical case history, allowing for a reconsideration of interdisciplinary method for early modern studies and beyond.