The Word as Object: The Rabelaisian Novel

Abstract

If we examine George Steiner's argument that scientific revolution of mid-seventeenth century marked beginning of a retreat from word, a decline of humanistic confidence in ability of verbal language to apprehend totality of reality and experience, we discover an interesting paradox.' For within a hundred years wordiest of all artistic forms, novel, is a thriving enterprise. It is also true that by eighteenth century a novelist like Sterne was questioning efficacy of fictional language in ways that will continue to be common to novelists of our own day. But such questioning had already begun in sixteenth century with Rabelais. So to understand better this ongoing problem of novelist's confrontation with his medium, we must go back to historical moment at which novel as we know it had its inception-the birth of age of printing. The Gutenberg revolution transformed primarily oral art of literature into a primarily visual one, replacing spoken word with printed Literature thus became largely a mode of silence, to be read to oneself rather than spoken or heard aloud. At same time language became objectified, reified, mass-produced as part of a concrete and portable object, book. For Marshall McLuhan significance of Rabelais lies in his early awareness of the that issues from mere additive association of homogeneous parts, that is, from the uniformity and repeatability of printed word. He is primarily referring to homogenizing and democratizing effects of print on reading public of Rabelais' day; but there is also gigantism of Rabelais' prose style-particularly evident in his catalogues-which was influenced by new typographical effects available to him. McLuhan goes on to say that Rabelais is a transitional figure, since earthy tactility of his work was a throwback to old audile-tactile manuscript culture at same time as his visual verbosity