Advertising the Self in Renaissance France by Scott Francis

Author:Scott Francis [Francis, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Modern, 18th Century
ISBN: 9781644530085
Google: W7fbDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2019-04-10T22:33:18+00:00

His trade has no inherent value, but the manner in which he advertises it can confer value upon it in the eyes of those like the skeptical sot who subsequently confronts him.

By the time Rabelais began publishing his vernacular works, Doribus and Aliborum had become prominent enough to serve as points of reference for other dits like that of Maistre Hambrelin, serviteur de Maistre Aliborum, cousin germain de Pacolet. This piece can be dated to the 1530s or 1540s on the grounds that its author not only borrows from Maistre Aliborum and Watelet de tous mestiers, but also references Marot’s Alix and Frippelippes, the “valet” who lambasts Marot’s nemesis François Sagon in his master’s stead. Like his predecessors, Hambrelin is a seller of “triacle” as well as a crier, and he knows how to prepare “pouldre d’oribus,” a bogus concoction that shares its putative inventor’s name.17 The theriacleur had thus become a theatrical character with recognizable traits and a distinct vocabulary, and Rabelais frequently makes reference to both.

What is perhaps most interesting about the thériacleur of farces and sotties is less the frequency with which he appears than the prophylactic role he serves vis-à-vis the audience. This role is clearest in Le pardonneur, le triacleur, et la tavernière. The farce opens with the pardoner performing his pitch to the crowd and touting his relics, the ears of “Sainct Couillebault” [Saint Happysacks] and his sister, “Saincte Velue” [Saint Fuzzy], whose clearly sexual names are at odds with their supposedly saintly status. The triacleur then performs his pitch, and like Aliborum, he tries to attract the crowd’s attention by passing off an eel named Margot as the poisonous adder from which he sources his medicine. He then touts his treacle as a potent antivenin:

Car il n’y a poyson si forte,

Soit reagal ou arceniq,

Avant que vous eussiez dit: picq,

Vous seriez guery trestout sain,

Et feussiez-vous mors d’un aspicq.18

[For there is no poison so strong,

Not even aconite or arsenic,

That, no sooner than you could say “pike,”

You wouldn’t be completely cured,

Even if you had been bitten by an asp.]

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