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Forum for Modern Language Studies Advance Access published online on December 17, 2007
Forum for Modern Language Studies, doi:10.1093/fmls/cqm120
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved

Inside out: female bodies in Rabelais

Pollie Bromilow

SOCLAS
University of Liverpool
Liverpool L69 7ZR
United Kingdom


  Abstract

This article explores representations of female bodies in Rabelais in the light of Laqueur's notion of the "one-sex body". Contrary to previous studies which have argued that women are marginalised and excluded from Rabelais's works, this piece demonstrates the author's fascination with the female body, a site that he revisits throughout his narratives. This preoccupation emerges from the impossibility of resolving tensions inherent in the social construction of two genders within the medically-defined "one-sex body". As a consequence, Rabelais continually seeks to cover over signs of female sexual difference by using representational strategies which rewrite the female body in terms of its safer (male) parallel, particularly during scenes of childbirth. These dynamics of desire and revulsion echo Kristeva's theory of the abject, where the primal scene of abjection (the child's rejection of the Mother) resurfaces in society's expulsion of waste beyond its boundaries, exteriorising the danger within.

Key Words: Rabelais, François • Kristeva, Julia • Laqueur, Thomas • Bahktin, Mikhail • body (treatment of) • childbirth (representations of) • the abject • Renaissance literature • women in literature • feminism


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