Todd W. Reeser is associate professor of French at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Moderating Masculinity in Early Modern Culture and Masculinities in Theory. Floyd Gray is professor emeritus at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Le style de Montaigne, Rabelais et l'ecriture, Gender, Rhetoric, and Print Culture in French Renaissance Writing, and La renaissance des mots
The works of Francois Rabelais embody the Renaissance spirit of discovery and are crucial to the development of early modern prose and to the birth of the novel. This volume's essays present strategies for the classroom, discussing the classical and biblical allusions; the context of humanism and evangelical reform; various themes; both feminism and masculinity as vexing subjects; Rabelais's erudition; and the challenges of teaching his inventive language, his ambiguity, and his scatology.