The Authorship of the "Isle Sonnante"

Abstract

THE publication by the Socidt6 des Ptudes Rabelaisiennes of a reprint of the Isle Sonnante, admirably edited by MM. Abel Lefranc and Jacques Boulenger from the unique copy in the possession of a private owner, has enabled students for the first time to make a careful study of the text of this first instalment of the Fifth Book of Pantagruel. It will be recollected that the Isle Sonnante appeared in 1562 (between eight and ten years after Rabelais's death) without either the publisher's name or the place of publication, and that it professed to be the continuation of Pantagruel's voyage written by Rabelais himself. It was followed in 1564 by the publication of the complete Fifth Book, which also professed to be Rabelais's work. Further, there is a manuscript of the whole Book in the Biblioth6que Nationale; it is written in a sixteenth century hand which is certainly not Rabelais's. Previous to the reprint of the Isle Sonnante, it might have been supposed-in fact, I did so suppose-that this MS. represented the oldest form of the text. But M. Boulenger in his excellent introduction to the reprint has made it clear that it really represents a stage intermediate between the Isle Sonnante and the text of 1564.