Rabelais Parrhesiastes : The Rhetoric of Insult and Rabelais's Cynical Mask

The article argues that Rabelais's insults can best be understood in the context of the cynical use of parrhesia (both frank and licentious speech). The problem of verbal insult has its deepest literary implications for the notion of the"author," for the restaging of the ostracizing effect of censorship spoken from places of religious authority is a particularly successful model of authorial control. This is why Rabelais's language deserves to be re-examined in the context of polemical, insulting religious speech.