Imagining Rabelais in Renaissance England

This engaging book explores Renaissance England`s ambivalent responses to the notorious French writer Francois Rabelais, famed for his learning, wordplay, and insight, but also for his scoffing, supposed atheism, filth, and irresponsible whimsy. English writers including Ben Jonson, John Donne, James I, Shakespeare, and many others both appreciated and condemned Rabelais, expressing the divisions and ambiguities of their times.

Anne Lake Prescott is Professor of English at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she was recently chair. A Columbia Ph.D., she has also taught in the Columbia graduate department. She is the author of French Poets and the English Renaissance: Studies in Fame and Transformation, many articles on Renaissance literature, and ten contributions to The Spenser Encyclopedia.