The Project
This project investigates the fictional works and private correspondence of French Humanist writer François Rabelais to demonstrate how his professional medical knowledge informed his approach to writing fiction and his ambitions for what his books might achieve amongst his readers.
Rabelais is a major voice in European culture whose influence extends beyond the purely literary to the fields of medicine, law, theology, philosophy and humour theory and his idiosyncratic style of writing and fusion of genres and disciplines is often cited as having influenced non-Francophone writers, such as Sterne, Márquez and Bakhtin.