This book reveals a tradition of thought overlooked in our intellectual history but enormously influential even now: the tradition of odious praise. Distinct from more conventional rhetorical exercises, such as panegyric or the funeral oration, odious praise uses acclaim to censure or to critique. This book reassesses the genre of praise-and-blame rhetoric by considering the potential of odious praise to undermine consensus and to challenge a society’s normative values.Surveying li...

The Sophistic Renaissance traces the fragmentary fortune of the ancient Greek sophists in the European Renaissance. After examining the textual tradition of the sophists from antiquity to the Renaissance and documenting their notoriety in humanist commentaries, the study surveys a broad range of literary texts that share the sophistic impulse to revel in opposing arguments and to exploit the capacity of speech to neutralize itself and to undermine all dogmatic convictions. The two authors ...

This new study examines the relationship of atheism to religious tolerance from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment in a broad array of literary texts and political and religious controversies written in Latin and the vernacular primarily in France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The main authors featured are Desiderius Erasmus, Sebastian Castellio, Jean Bodin, Michel de Montaigne, Dirck Coornhert, Justus Lipsius, Gisbertus Voetius, the anonymous Theophrastus redivivus, and Pi...

- T. VIGLIANO, "Le pantagruélisme est-il un paganisme ? Rabelais et l'amour des ennemis" ;- E. M. MACPHAIL, "Rabelais and the Circulation of Commonplaces in Renaissance Humanism" ;- R. CAPPELLEN, "Rabelais entre bibliophilie et lecture érudite : sur un exemplaire du Tiers Livre de 1552" ;- J. PATTERSON, "Rabelais's Uncommon Villains : A Reinterpretation of Quart Livre 45-7 ;- F. ROUGET, "Avantage Saint-Gelais : retour sur l'attribution de l'“Enigme en prophétie”...

O. ZEGNA RATA, L’acheminement vers la parole, ou l’éducation de Gargantua; I.R. MORRISON, Rabelais contre Machiavel dans Gargantua; P. GILMAN and A.C. KELLER, Why Rabelais wrote Gargantua after Pantagruel?; E. McPHAIL, Rabelais’s Allegory of Prudence; L.K. DONALDSON-EVANS, The Peregrina-tions of Pantagruel: Rabelais and the Travel Literature of the Renaissance; N. FRELICK, “J’ouis-sens”: Thaumaste dans le Pantagruel de Rabelais et le “sujet-supposé-savoir”; P. GILMAN and A.C. KELLER, “Et f...

Sommaire / Table of contents: E. MACPHAIL, "From Caesar to Augustus: a note on Rabelais' revisions to Pantagruel"; C. CLAVEL, "Dithyrambe pour un massacre, Création lexicale et esthétique des genres"; H. ORII, "Oncques ne feut faict soloecisme": l'interprétation et l'image du membre viril dans le Tiers Livre de Rabelais"; J. PARKIN, "The Polygelastic Rabelais"; X. UGARTE-BALLESTER, "Les traductions catalanes de Rabelais"; S. D. JUALL, "Early Modern Franco-Ottoman Relations: Utopian Mapping...

Ever wake up and feel disoriented, not knowing the place or time? Erasmus finds himself in that situation and slowly discovers he is surrounded by noteworthy men and women from the pages of history. They are all focused on the question: What is good? Initially, their ideas vary greatly. Their serious dialogue is peppered with humor as they discover the common ground that unites them.

Œuvre du célèbre juriste Jean Bodin, De la démonomanie des sorciers deviendra rapidement le manuel de référence des juges siégeant aux procès de sorcellerie. A l'aube de la plus intense période de persécution en France, le juriste se propose de définir "le sorcier", d'élucider ses machinations clandestines, et de fournir un mode d'emploi visant à faciliter l'instruction des procès en sorcellerie, depuis les dénonciations et les interrogatoires jusqu'au bûcher. Bodin se distingue de ses pré...