The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance

• Preface; Introduction; Part I. Phetorics of Gender: 1. Pernette du Guillet and a voice of one's own; 2. Rabelais and the representation of male subjectivity: the Rondibilis episode as case study; 3. Verba erotica: Marguerite de Navarre and the rhetoric of silence; 4. Pedagogical graffiti and the rhetoric of conceit; 5. Montaigne's family romance; Part II. Figures of the Body: A. Disfiguring the Feminine: 6. Architecture of the Utopian body: the blasons of Marot and Ronsard; 7. Fictions of the body and the gender of the text in Ronsard's 1552 Amours; B. The text as body: 8. My body, my text: Montaigne and the rhetoric of self-portraiture; Part III. Allegories of Repression: 9. Maurice Scève: the rhetoric of dream and the language of love; 10. Sexuality and the political unconscious in Rabelais' Quatre Livre: three case studies: A. Pro-logos: excess and the golden mean; B. Rabelais' comedy of cruelty: the chicanous episode; C. Rabelais in Papimania: power and the rule of law; Bibliography of works cited.

"Kritzman's writing blends psychoanalytical models of our time with the rhetoric of the Renaissance...the study affords rich speculation on the affinities of eros and literary creation." Journal of the History of Sexuality