Of Horse Fish And Frozen Words

In recent decades, the functioning of language both as an independent structure and as the structuring vehicle for other systems, as for example literature, has riveted critical attention, to such an extent that we tend to forget at times that the question of how language signifies did not originate with Saussure, although his formulation remains one of the most articulate in this century. It is nonetheless evident—and even a cliché—that in every era there are those who wrestle with the relationship of signifier to signified, feeling perhaps that some essential key to the working of the human spirit must be contained in the symbolic system structuring not only articulation but thought itself. François Rabelais is one of those who wrestle. The problem of language weaves its way in and out of his works as Rabelais recombines and juxtaposes words and even syllables, pushing language to the limits of expression, of meaning, of signification. While on one hand therefore, Rabelais' personal bout with language places him squarely within the current of linguistic inquiry as old as human thought, it is at the same time intensely reflective of specific Renaissance preoccupations, as in the latter part of the fifteenth and during the sixteenth century, Europe underwent what might in modern day usage be termed an "identity crisis," or re-evaluation of the sense of self and non-self, of the real and the imaginary, of meaning and its representation. This re-evaluation was greatly influenced by the acquisition of new topographical knowl-