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Loading... The Problem of Unbelief in the 16th Century: The Religion of Rabelais (1942)132 | None | 206,571 |
(4) | 1 | Lucien Febvre's magisterial study of sixteenth century religious and intellectual history, published in 1942, is at long last available in English, in a translation that does it full justice. The book is a modern classic. Febvre, founder with Marc Bloch of the journal Annales, was one of France's leading historians, a scholar whose field of expertise was the sixteenth century. This book, written late in his career, is regarded as his masterpiece. Despite the subtitle, it is not primarily a study of Rabelais; it is a study of the mental life, the mentalité, of a whole age. Febvre worked on the book for ten years. His purpose at first was polemical: he set out to demolish the notion that Rabelais was a covert atheist, a freethinker ahead of his time. To expose the anachronism of that view, he proceeded to a close examination of the ideas, information, beliefs, and values of Rabelais and his contemporaries. He combed archives and local records, compendia of popular lore, the work of writers from Luther and Erasmus to Ronsard, the verses of obscure neo-Latin poets. Everything was grist for his mill: books about comets, medical texts, philological treatises, even music and architecture. The result is a work of extraordinary richness of texture, enlivened by a wealth of concrete details--a compelling intellectual portrait of the period by a historian of rare insight, great intelligence, and vast learning. Febvre wrote with Gallic flair. His style is informal, often witty, at times combative, and colorful almost to a fault. His idiosyncrasies of syntax and vocabulary have defeated many who have tried to read, let alone translate, the French text. Beatrice Gottlieb has succeeded in rendering his prose accurately and readably, conveying a sense of Febvre's strong, often argumentative personality as well as his brilliantly intuitive feeling for Renaissance France.… (more) |
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▾References References to this work on external resources. Wikipedia in English (1)▾Book descriptions Lucien Febvre's magisterial study of sixteenth century religious and intellectual history, published in 1942, is at long last available in English, in a translation that does it full justice. The book is a modern classic. Febvre, founder with Marc Bloch of the journal Annales, was one of France's leading historians, a scholar whose field of expertise was the sixteenth century. This book, written late in his career, is regarded as his masterpiece. Despite the subtitle, it is not primarily a study of Rabelais; it is a study of the mental life, the mentalité, of a whole age. Febvre worked on the book for ten years. His purpose at first was polemical: he set out to demolish the notion that Rabelais was a covert atheist, a freethinker ahead of his time. To expose the anachronism of that view, he proceeded to a close examination of the ideas, information, beliefs, and values of Rabelais and his contemporaries. He combed archives and local records, compendia of popular lore, the work of writers from Luther and Erasmus to Ronsard, the verses of obscure neo-Latin poets. Everything was grist for his mill: books about comets, medical texts, philological treatises, even music and architecture. The result is a work of extraordinary richness of texture, enlivened by a wealth of concrete details--a compelling intellectual portrait of the period by a historian of rare insight, great intelligence, and vast learning. Febvre wrote with Gallic flair. His style is informal, often witty, at times combative, and colorful almost to a fault. His idiosyncrasies of syntax and vocabulary have defeated many who have tried to read, let alone translate, the French text. Beatrice Gottlieb has succeeded in rendering his prose accurately and readably, conveying a sense of Febvre's strong, often argumentative personality as well as his brilliantly intuitive feeling for Renaissance France. ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description
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Le Problème de l'incroyance est un magnifique livre sur Rabelais, un extraordinaire effort pour faire revivre sa " singulière vitalité ". Mais c'est surtout un décisif discours de la méthode historique, dans la mesure où il ne veut raconter qu'un Rabelais possible, participant d'un temps difficile où la curiosité des hommes était immense, les enthousiasmant et les inquiétant tout à la fois, mais engageant certains d'entre eux dans la voie d'un humanisme évangélique. Dans la mesure encore où l'historien se fond dans son objet d'étude et où il devient lui-même un humaniste érasmien combattant pour défendre, contre le " sacrilège " de l'anachronisme qui nie l'autre comme différence, la liberté de Rabelais d'avoir eu sa vérité, en son temps et en son âme. En publiant ce livre durant les jours sombres de 1942, Lucien Febvre n'était-il pas animé de la même confiance dans la puissance de l'intelligence que celle qui fit inscrire à Rabelais, sur la grande porte de Thélème, les mots interdisant l'entrée aux " hypocrites, bigots, vieux matagots, marmiteux, boursouflés... " ? Ne voulut-il pas écrire un livre à " plus hault sens ", un message d'espérance dans l'avenir de l'histoire ? | |
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