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The unbridled tongue : babble and gossip in Renaissance France / Emily Butterworth

Author
Butterworth, Emily
Published
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016.
Edition
First edition.
Physical Description
viii, 233 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

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Contents
Introduction: Unbridled tongues -- Too much talk -- Speaking in tongues: Pentecost and prophecy -- Public voice: Rabelais -- Noise: Heptaméron -- Licence: Ronsard -- Rumour: Montaigne -- Court: Brantôme -- Women: Les Caquets de l'accouchée -- Conclusion: Gossip in the public sphere.
Summary
The Unbridled Tongue explores gossip, rumour, and talking too much in Renaissance France and how these practices were described, proscribed, and occasionally adopted in literary writing. Taking its cue from Erasmus's Lingua, in which both the subjective and political consequences of an idle and unbridled tongue are emphasized, the book investigates the impact of gossip and rumour on contemporary conceptions of identity and political engagement. Emily Butterworth discusses prescriptive literature on the tongue and theological discussions of Pentecost and prophecy, and then covers nearly a century in chapters focused on a single text: Rabelais's Tiers Livre, Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron, Ronsard's Descours des misères de ce temps, Montaigne's 'Des boyteux', Brantôme's Dames galantes, and the anonymous Caquets de l'accouchée. In covering the 'long sixteenth century', the book is able to investigate the impact of the French Wars of Religion on perceptions of gossip and rumour, and place them in the context of an emerging public sphere of political critique and discussion. The figure of the 'public voice', although associated with unruly utterance, was nevertheless a powerful rhetorical tool for the expression of grievances. The Cynic virtue of parrhesia, or free speech, is similarly ambivalent in many accounts, oscillating between bold truth-telling (liberté) and disordered babble (licence). Drawing on modern and pre-modern theories of the uses and function of gossip, Butterworth argues that, despite this ambivalence in descriptions of the tongue, gossip and idle talk were finally excluded from the public sphere by being associated with the feminine and the irrational. -- from dust jacket.
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Genre(s)
ISBN
9780199662302 (hbk.)
0199662304 (hbk.)
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-229) and index.
Source of Acquisition
Purchased with funds from the Laurent LeSage Libraries Collection Endowment for French Continental Literature; 2017
Endowment Note
Gift of the Laurent LeSage Libraries Collection Endowment for French Continental Literature
Laurent LeSage Libraries Collection Endowment for French Continental Literature
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