Metamorphosis of the apothegm in Étienne Tabourot’s Bigarrures: to the problem of genre
Metamorphosis of the apothegm in Étienne Tabourot’s Bigarrures: to the problem of genre
Стаф И.К.
Abstract
The article deals with the transformation of the apothegm genre in Etienne Tabourot’s Bigarrures (1585). In contrast to the humanist facetia, the comic effect of Tabourot’s short sayings is based
not on wit, but on absurdity and violation of logical connections. Relying on the tradition established by Erasmus’s Apothegms and their reception in sixteenth-century French culture, the writer mocks bookish scholarship and at the same time parodies, in the spirit of Rabelais, the “natural” national rhetoric, which was embodied and substantiated in Montaigne’s Essais.
Keywords
France; Renaissance; apothegm; bigarrure; short narrative; compilation.
