ELIZABETH CHESNEY ZEGURA
Associate
Professor, French and Italian
Undergraduate Advisor,
French and Italian
The University
of Arizona
Modern Languages 556
(520) 621-3301
E-mail: zegurae@email.arizona.edu
RESEARCH PAGE
Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry
(Musée Condé, Chantilly),
courtesy of WebMuseum, Paris
GENERAL INTERESTS
My research focuses primarily on the literature and culture of the French Renaissance and the Italian Renaissance. I am particularly interested in the connections between literature, music, and painting; in issues of gender and social class; in economic metaphors and the economy of Renaissance Europe; in the mock-epic genre; in the relationship between politics and textuality; in comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to literature; and in the era of François I.
EARLIER RESEARCH
My early research focused primarily on mock-epic elements, counter-discourse, thematic similarities, and textual ambiguity in The Five Books of Pantagruel by Rabelais and in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. More recently, I have worked on economic metaphors and the vocabulary of exchange in Rabelais, and on the female warrior and political allegory in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Robert Garnier's Bradamante.
CURRENT RESEARCH
I have just finished compiling and editing The Rabelais Encyclopedia, published by Greenwood Press in Fall 2003. My recent conference presentations include papers on “Silence and Seeing in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron (SCMLA 2000), “Humor in the Heptameron” (International Humor Conference 2001), “The Servants’ Secrets in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron (RMMLA 2002), "Politics and Gender in Garnier's Bradamante" (SCMLA 2002), and “True Stories and Alternative Discourses: The Game of Love in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron,” (Discourses on Love, Marriage and Transgression in Medieval and Early Modern Literature: An International Symposium, University of Arizona 2003). I am currently continuing my study of gender and social rank in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron, and I would also like to continue my research on the figure of Bradamante, Ariosto's famous female knight errant. To learn more, please continue . . .
Reproductions of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa or La Gioconda (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and Botticelli's La Primavera or Allegory of Spring (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) are courtesy of WebMuseum, Paris. The Portrait of François I by Jean Clouet (Musée du Louvre, Paris) is provided by Web Gallery of Art. These images are intended for personal and educational use only and should not be copied or downloaded for any other purpose without prior authorization from the aforementioned sources. The reproduction and/or redistribution of these images for the purpose of sale or financial gain is strictly prohibited.
François Rabelais
Portrait
of Rabelais (Musée de Versailles)
from Le Tiers-Livre, ed. Michel Fezandat,
Paris, 1552
Truly a uomo universale or "Renaissance Man" by reason of his intellectual versatility, François Rabelais was a French monk turned physician who probably launched the first installment of his controversial Pantagrueline Tales at the Lyon fairs in 1532. Pantagruel (1532), Gargantua(1534 ), The Third Book (1546),The Fourth Book (1552), and an unauthenticated Fifth Book of Pantagruel stand as masterworks of world literature that have alternatively delighted, shocked, and puzzled readers for centuries. By turns pious and irreverent, earthy and refined, comic and serious, the polyvalent text of Rabelais offers a mirror of both popular and learned culture in the French Renaissance. Interpreted by some scholars as an affirmation of Christian humanism, and by others as an expression of profound skepticism that mocks and interrogates official values, The Pantagrueline Tales revolve around the burlesque adventures, mock-epic feats, and fantastic journeys of Gallic giants who double as Renaissance men. Almost impossible to classify generically, the texts keep the reader off balance with a macaronic admixture of lists, enigmas, and non sequiturs . . . epic feats, burlesque comedy, and topical satire . . . fantasy, folklore, and philosophy . . pedagogy, theology, and sociopolitical commentary . . . all grafted onto the Gargantua legend. Try browsing the links to online Rabelais texts for a taste of the Gallic doctor's prose.
My published research on Rabelais includes The Countervoyage of Rabelais and Ariosto: A Comparative Reading of Two Renaissance Mock Epics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1982); Rabelais Revisited (New York and London: Macmillan/Twayne, 1993), co-authored by Marcel Tetel; The Rabelais Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004), which I edited; "The Theme of Folly in Rabelais and Ariosto," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7:1 (Spring 1977), 67-93; and "Toward a Feminist Reading of Rabelais," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 15:1 (Spring 1985), 125-134.
Rabelais Links
. . . and. . .
Marguerite de Navarre
Sister of Francis I and grandmother of Henry IV of France, Marguerite d'Angoulême was Queen of Navarre and a Renaissance woman in her own right. Educated alongside her brother and well-versed in humanist letters, Marguerite counseled the King on matters of diplomacy and politics, no doubt contributing to the Crown's leniency toward and protection of Reformers and humanists against attacks by the Sorbonne prior to the Affaire des Placards in 1534. Subject to censorship herself for the evangelistic overtones of her poetic texts, Marguerite is best known today for her devotional poetry and for her much worldlier Heptaméron, a collection of seventy-eight provocative and ambiguous short stories inspired in part by Boccaccio's Decameron.
My recent research on Marguerite de Navarre includes a paper on issues of gender and social rank entitled "Silence and Seeing in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron: A Reading of the Thirty-First Nouvelle," presented at SCMLA 2000 (San Antonio, November 9-11) in a special session on "Taming the Renaissance Tongue." I also presented a symposium paper entitled "Humor in Marguerite de Navarre" at the International Humor Conference, held at the University of Maryland, July 6-9 of 2001, and a paper on Marguerite at RMMLA 2002 in Scottsdale, AZ (October 10-12), entitled "The Servants' Secrets in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron: Muted Voices, Battered Bodies, and Alternative Truths."
Marguerite de Navarre Links
...and...
Ariosto
Portrait of Ariosto, courtesy of LiberLiber
Lodovico Ariosto,
court poet for the Estense family in Ferrara, is best remembered for his
tongue-in-cheek satires, his theatrical works, and his brilliant chivalric
romance, the Orlando Furioso.
Loosely based on Italian parodies of The Song
of Roland, the Orlando Furioso is a remarkable blend of irony,
satire, fantasy, and poetry that foreshadows Cervantes' Don Quixote and ranks among the masterpieces
of Renaissance literature. Taking up where Boiardo left off in his Orlando Innamorato, Ariosto gives us a Roland
who falls in love with a pagan princess, neglects his military duties to search
for her, and suffers a mental breakdown when she marries someone else.
The trials and tribulations of this demythicized medieval hero, whose public
identity is gradually shattered by private crises, are interwoven with the
mock-epic adventures of numerous other knights errant, who journey through
magic castles and labyrinths . . . to the moon and back . . . in an allegorical
search for truth, wisdom, and fulfillment in a richly polyvalent world.
Because of its complexity and ambiguity, the Orlando
Furioso has lent itself to a plethora of conflicting interpretations
over the centuries. For some readers, it represents a nostalgic look back
at the bygone era of chivalry, a serene exercise in escapism, a luminous
tribute to Renaissance culture. More recently, however, scholars have
focused increasingly on the veiled irony, dark undercurrents, and glimpses of
cynicism, social satire, and epistemological inquiry that seem to simmer just
beneath the surface of the text.
My published scholarship on Ariosto includes The Countervoyage of Rabelais and Ariosto: A
Comparative Reading of Two Renaissance Mock Epics (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1982); "The Theme of Folly in Rabelais and
Ariosto," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7:1 (Spring
1977); and "La crise de Bradamante chez Garnier et l'Arioste: un dialogue
entre la loi et le moi," in Sans autre
guide: mélanges de littérature française de la Renaissance offerts à Marcel
Tetel (Paris: Klinksieck, 1999), pp. 225-238. I have
also continued working on the figure of Bradamante in Garnier, presenting a
paper entitled "Politics and Gender in Garnier's Bradamante"
at SCMLA 2003, Austin, TX, 31 Oct. - 2 November.
Ariosto Links
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