Renaissance et Réforme / 1 25 for many reasons his argument is not convincing. "The spirit of free and critical inquiry stemming from the Renaissance" found in Erasmus along with "the spirit of respectful, trusting adherence to dogma" (p. 308) could easily become unmoored If unbelief, whether in Christianity or the supernatural, is impossible in the century then it is difficult to account for Montaigne, not so much his use of ancient scepticism to attack religious dogmatism, but that, following Auerbach, a personal Christianity should be so far from Montaigne's acknowledged concerns. The issue does not seem to be belief or unbelief, but in the wake of Foucault, who is anticipated in Febvre's final pages, the identification of knowledge with interpretation and the role played by similitude in intellectual constructs. Febvre himself speaks ofLe Disciple de Pantagruel as "an insipid hodgepodge with nothing in it," and even its learned and meticulous editors speakof its "contes à dormir debout." Just as Febvre allows us to measure first-rate minds in all their force and complexity against third-rate poetasters, so Le Disciple provides a foil to Rabelais' s narrative genius. The editors can be praised for the interesting things they have to say about literary mediocrity: the independence of constituent elements, characteristic of folklore; the absence of allegory and polemical nuance; the simple formulas of causality; the superficial borrowing of Rabelaisian nomenclature (as opposed to Rabelais's wholesale theft of folkloric material); the charming animation of objects, but a corresponding inability to represent character.
Abstract. This paper explores an area which has proven difficult for scholars to penetrate: women's popular wisdom concerning medical matters in the later medieval period. Contextualized within an examination of medieval medical texts both by and about women, our discussion focuses on a later 15th-century French work, The Distaff Gospels. This text, published recently in English for the first time since 1510, consists of more than 200 pieces of advice or "gospels," ostensibly conveyed to one another by a group of women who met together during the long winter evenings to spin. A significant portion of the advice might be considered "medical" in nature; it is grouped into two broad categories: pregnancy and health. We conclude that although our text is male mediated, it provides a reliable and valuable guide to peasant women's medical lore during this period.Résumé. Cet article aborde un domaine qui reste encore peu accessible aux chercheurs, celui des connaissances médicales des femmes du peuple au Moyen Age, notamment à la campagne. Placée dans le contexte des traités médiévaux sur la santé des femmes, éventuellement composés par des femmes, notre présentation est centrée sur un texte français de la fin du Moyen Age, les Évangiles des Quenouilles. Cette oeuvre rassemble une collection de plus de 200 « évangiles », exemples de leur savoir traditionnel, échangés par un groupe de villageoises qui se rencontraient pour filer durant les longues soirées d'hiver. Une portion significative de ce savoir est de nature médicale. Il peut se répartir en deux catégories. La première concerne les questions reliées à la grossesse et à la santé des enfants ; la seconde traite de la santé en général, avec des façons Author, position
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