Tuesday 2nd May 2023, 5:15-6:30pm

 Hovenden Room, All Souls College 

Rachel Hindmarsh (Trinity): ‘Dolet, Rabelais, Paré: Medicine and Literature in Early Modern France’   

The most common articulation of the relation between medicine and literature in early modern studies is that of dissecting the text. My paper brings together three early modern moments that coalesce around this conceptual mainstay. The first is Etienne Dolet’s poetic representation of François Rabelais’s own public anatomical demonstration in 1537 at Lyon’s Hôtel-Dieu, which seemingly invites this critical practice before opening up cracks in its analogical power by asking new questions of testimony and temporality. The second moment takes place in Rabelais’s fictional text, as I trace how Dolet’s tensions are reworked by Rabelais in the testimony of a character who loses his head in battle, takes a trip to the underworld, and is resurrected by suturing hands. Rethinking the practice of dissection in Dolet allows for, here, a reconsideration of the analogical value of dissecting a text; I put forward an alternative lens of reanimation and suggest that it is the tools of interdisciplinary study that can make this happen in Rabelais’s text. Finally, this paper visits the medical world proper; surgeon Ambroise Paré’s case history about a patient who, just like Rabelais’s fictional one, speaks after suturing –this time to exonerate his servant who has been wrongly convicted of his murder. This third moment allows for a reflection on how we can understand medicine and literature to reciprocally inform and challenge each other in this period; thus concretising the new model of multidisciplinary scholarship –beyond dissecting the text– that this paper puts forward.   

Sarah Leanne Phillips (École Normale Supérieure, Sorbonne Université): ‘The Importance of Interdisciplinarity: Working with Disability Studies and Crip theory’  

This paper will provide an introduction to disability studies and crip theory. I will be discussing the importance of engaging with these two fields of critical theory and their relevance within the realm of French studies. I will begin my paper by discussing the social model of disability; I will follow this up with summaries of the most interesting critical theories I have encountered in my research, including, but not limited to, crip theory, crip time, masking, disability as masquerade and culture “as” disability (R. McDermott & H. Varenne, 1995). My paper will end with a personal reflection on the teaching of disability studies. I will also (briefly) touch upon research issues relating to literary and historical disability studies.