Book Description

These fifteen essays by former doctoral students, now distinguished seiziemistes, of Francois Rigolot, Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French Literature at Princeton University, represent a tribute to his qualities as professor, scholar, and person who embodies both a Montaignian esprit genereux and a Rabelaisian pantagruelisme . They pay homage to his renowned erudition and publications on all aspects of French Renaissance literature, his pedagogical skills, his support of students and colleagues, his leadership at Princeton University, and his inspirational personality. The balanced mixture of creative imagination, rigorous explication de texte, and delightful personal rhetoric that characterizes Professor Rigolot's scholarly works still forms a source of inspiration for his students, as is clear in this volume. Regrouping the major fields of interest in which the minds of magister and discipuli produced the most fruitful dialogues (poetry, the Renaissance au feminin, Rabelais, and Montaigne), spanning a wide variety of authors (Petrarch, Sceve, Ronsard, Cretin, Marguerite de Navarre, Louise Labe, Rabelais, Montaigne, La Boetie, and Pascal), these studies for a tribute to the extraordinary breadth of Professor Rigolot's research interests.