The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance (Hardcover)

Preface; Introduction; Part I. Phetorics of Gender: 1. Pernette du Guillet and a voice of one's own; 2. Rabelais and the representation of male subjectivity: the Rondibilis episode as case study; 3. Verba erotica: Marguerite de Navarre and the rhetoric of silence; 4. Pedagogical graffiti and the rhetoric of conceit; 5. Montaigne's family romance; Part II. Figures of the Body: A. Disfiguring the Feminine: 6. Architecture of the Utopian body: the blasons of Marot and Ronsard; 7. Fictions of the body and the gender of the text in Ronsard's 1552 Amours; B. The text as body: 8. My body, my text: Montaigne and the rhetoric of self-portraiture; Part III. Allegories of Repression: 9. Maurice Sceve: the rhetoric of dream and the language of love; 10. Sexuality and the political unconscious in Rabelais' Quatre Livre: three case studies: A. Pro-logos: excess and the golden mean; B. Rabelais' comedy of cruelty: the chicanous episode; C. Rabelais in Papimania: power and the rule of law; Bibliography of works cited.