7 THE LAST LAUGH: CARNIVALIZING THE FEMININE IN PIRON'S “LA PUCE”

Sharon Diane Nell

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“… the old hags are laughing” (RW, 25).

“… she takes off—laughing” (Clément 1986, 33).

While Mikhail Bakhtin excludes, through his silence, feminist issues from his own work on carnival, and while to feminist critics this silence has posed theoretical problems in appropriating his concepts (see Herndl 1991 and Sipple 1991, 149), it can be argued that these issues have “always already” been in his work. Indeed, from a Derridean point of view, one might say that Bakhtin's exclusion of the feminine is illusory: Woman, “the outside”, is ”inside” because of the intimate connection Bakhtin makes between the female body and carnival (Derrida 1976, 44–65).¹ In the introductory chapter of Rabelais and His World, for example, Bakhtin enumerates the ”traditional contents” of the “system of grotesque images”: “pregnancy, birth, growth, old age, disintegration, dismemberment” (RW, 25; emphasis added). By locating at the very beginning of his list two images attributed exclusively to the female body (pregnancy and birth), Bakhtin identifies Woman with the grotesque. On this level, the female body is a place of carnival.

Mary Russo further justifies the utilization of carnival in feminist studies by pointing out that, although Bakhtin developed a complex model of carnival, he is by no means the sole scholar to examine festival phenomena (1986, 219). In this regard, she points to the work of three women: Nathalie Zemon Davis (1965), and Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément (1986). In Russo's opinion, Bakhtin's view of carnivalized women remains “repressed and undeveloped” (1986. 219). For Russo, carnival and the grotesque female body are relevant to feminist approaches to literature precisely because they are concerned with “issues of bodily containment, disguise and gender masquerade, abjection and marginality, parody and excess” (214). Within a framework that brings to mind Fredric Jameson's ideological “strategies of containment”, she posits that women, as well as other “marginalized groups”, are held in check through carnival's ultimately negative depiction of their uninhibited and grotesque bodies (Jameson 1981, 52–53; Russo 1986, 214).

Russo takes this essentially negative view of carnival and applies it to Catherine Clément's version of festival. This interpretation of carnival, in which men watch and control women, constitutes a major concern in Clément's “The Guilty One”. In fact, Clement's negative reading of both the inquisitor's and the psychoanalyst's gaze corresponds neatly to Bakhtin's condemnation of monological and reductive “official culture”. Nonetheless, Russo oversimplifies Clément. The latter also speaks of a liberating, gynocentric and festive pre-Christian ritual, the Witches' Sabbath, where woman was “at the center”, where there was no margin, where “woman was all” (Clément 1986, 24. 31 ). It is precisely through this more positive image of festival that we are reminded of Bakhtin's carnival. In Clément's opinion, the powerful witch who reigned at the Sabbath was the ancestress not only of the sorceress tortured by the inquisitors but also of Charcot's and Freud's hysterics. Clément's festival is a complex, organic whole in which the positive and the negative, the Bakhtinian and the specularized, are deeply interwoven and essentially inseparable.

In the wake of Mary Russo's pioneering work, carnival and hysteria continue to fascinate feminist scholars. Clair Wills' “Upsetting the Public: Carnival, Hysteria and Women's Texts”, for example, emphasizes that the hysterical crisis can function in positive ways and thus, like Bakhtin's carnival, produce change. In order for change to take place, however, the hysterical experience must be communicated by a feminine point of view (1989, 143). Wills then points to the work of contemporary poet, Medbh McGuckian, as an attempt at effecting that kind of productive communication (131). Likewise, in “The Framing of the Shrew: Discourses on Hysteria and its Resisting Voices”, Maroussia Hajdukowski-Ahmed addresses what she perceives as Bakhtin's “blind spot”, namely “sexual difference as a construct, as a structuring factor of discourses on hysteria” (1993, 177). In a fascinating discussion of Charcot's hysterics, she argues that the grotesque performances of these women subverted the patriarchal mechanism which was attempting to produce the universal truth concerning sex (193). These recent articles² justify the continuation of this feminist exploration of carnival. While a thorough comparison of Clément's notion of gynocentric carnival and that of Bakhtin is precluded here by space limitations, I will utilize both points of view in the present essay, proposing their application to a short French rococo work, Alexis Piron's narrative poem ”La Puce”, in which discourse on the female body and its potential sexual power plays a major role.

Bakhtin's own brief discussion of rococo style shows that the image of woman is an appropriate vehicle for the exploration of carnival.³ Interestingly, although rococo style dominates the first half of the eighteenth century and thus predates the Enlightenment, Bakhtin mentions it after the Enlightenment in his chapter on the history of laughter:

Carnival forms serve a different role in rococo literature [from that of the Enlightenment). Here the gay positive tone of laughter is preserved. But everything is reduced to “chamber” lightness and intimacy. The frankness of the marketplace is turned into privacy, the indecency of the lower stratum is transformed into erotic frivolity, and gay relativity becomes skepticism and wantonness. And yet. in the hedonistic ”boudoir” atmosphere a few sparks of the carnival fires which bum up “hell” have been preserved. In the setting of gloomy seriousness so widespread in the eighteenth century, rococo perpetuated after a fashion the traditional carnivalesque spirit. (RW. 119)

Thus, as we have seen, carnival implies the presence of women and evokes certain feminist issues. In addition, as the above quotation shows, the term ”carnivalesque” can appropriately describe rococo style, according to Bakhtin; moreover, the expressions he uses — “‘chamber’ lightness” and “‘boudoir’ atmosphere” — identify the rococo as a “feminine” style. Patrick Brady, the foremost contemporary scholar on rococo literature, summarizes the characteristics of this period style in terms remarkably similar to Bakhtin's:

That rococo is a feminine idiom is seen from three sets of characteristics: (i) an intimate charm and persuasive grace expressed in softened outlines and pleasant curves (anti-classicism); (ii) a fragile delicacy and a sophisticated refinement and elegance (anti-baroque); and (iii) a lively playfulness which brilliantly exploited the rhythmic possibilities inherent in the complex interplay of associated curves, delighting in asymmetry and piquant combinations, and leading to frivolity and fantastic caprice (anti-classicism). (1964, 42)

Bakhtin's brief discussion reflects the traditional denigration of rococo as defective (”reduced […] to […] intimacy [and] privacy”) and decadent (”erotic frivolity […] skepticism and wantonness”) when compared to carnival.⁴ Indeed, if we accept Brady's description, it is the “feminine” aspects of the style — i.e. intimacy and frivolity — that Bakhtin highlights as being at odds with the notion of carnival. Yet, Bakhtin concedes, those same feminine, rococo boudoirs produced the only carnivalesque “sparks” in the otherwise “gloomy” Age of Enlightenment.

Carnival, the feminine, and rococo style are thus connected in a complex and paradoxical way. The complexity of their relationship is heightened if we take a closer look at the historical position of woman in early-eighteenth-century France as well as her depiction in rococo literature. Indeed, while the notion of Woman is essential to the rococo, and while women could become socially powerful during the period, they gained that power through debasing means, primarily through trading their favors in the sexual market-place: “[The reign of women in the early eighteenth century] may be largely a myth. Those women who exercised great influence at that time did so either at the price of publicly occupying a position of great moral ambiguity (e.g. Pompadour) or at least at the cost of great continual effort on behalf of their followers (e.g. the famous maîtresses de salon)” (Brady 1984, 130–131). Vera Lee concurs: “For modern liberationists, that eighteenth-century brand of woman power would be more insulting and demeaning than out-and-out prostitution” (1975, 130). In rococo literature, while the so-called “feminine principle” appears superficially to be idealized, Brady's studies on the style reveal that women are reduced to divertissements, or objets d'art (1979, 235), a tension which, as I shall later contend, Piron's poem clearly demonstrates.

The characteristics that Bakhtin targets as responsible for the defective nature of rococo carnival are the same ones Brady describes as feminine. In addition, Bakhtin contends that the rococo version of carnival retains “the gay positive tone of laughter” (RW, 119). Can we agree with his evaluation of rococo carnival's meaning? A “Feminist/Bakhtinian” analysis of “La Puce” will attempt to answer this question. In addition, this study will provide the opportunity to take a new look at carnival in relation to a neglected French writer and one of his works. A logical first step in this process, then, consists in placing Piron's life and oeuvre in historical context.

HISTORICIZING CARNIVAL IN PIRON

Alexis Piron was born in Dijon in 1689, the son of an apothecary, and died in Paris in 1773. Despite being virtually unknown today, he was an established writer in his time: more than sixty editions of his work were published between 1758 and 1928. in addition to dozens of his individual works.⁵ Many details are known about his life from references in both contemporary and posthumous works (see Dufay 1928a, 257–263). His life has been documented in biographies by Pierre Dufay (1928b), Paul Chaponnière (1935) and Marcel Barbotte (1984).

In 1719, at the age of 30, educated in law but disliking the profession, Piron left Burgundy for Paris, where he intended to make a living through writing (Dufay 1928b, xviii–xix). At first, like Julien Sorel, he supported himself as a copiste for a wealthy aristocrat, the Chevalier de Belle-Isle (xix). Soon after, he was introduced into high society and began to frequent the Marquise de Mimeure, a connection made possible because of his relationship with her femme de chambre, Marie-Thérèse Debar (xxv).⁶ Piron's literary career got its start at the Foire de Saint-Germain in 1722 with the production of Arlequin-Deucalion, a play whose success was underscored by the roars of laughter from the audience (xxxvi). Later, Piron left the Foire for the Comédie-Française, for which he wrote his ”masterpiece”, La Métromanie (Ixxvii).

The “théâtre de la foire”, Piron's first literary outlet, has a direct relation to carnival in its most traditional sense.⁷ There were two such “foires” or fairs in the Paris area — the Foire de Saint-Germain on the grounds of Saint-Germain- des-Prés, and the Foire Saint-Laurent, which belonged to the Saint-Lazare monastery and was located in roughly the same area as what is now the Gare de l'Est (Dufay 1928b, xxxii–xxxiii). Among the amusements offered at these fairs were comic plays which, much to the chagrin of the official Comédie- Française,⁸ were attended by a cross section of Parisian society:

[C]harlatans, maquerelles, mauvais garçons et prostituées côto[yaient] les “personnes de qualité”, venues goûter le frisson que donne la promiscuité de la “canaille” […]. [L]'observance des règles sociales mena[çait] à chaque carrefour de voler en éclats […].⁹

[[C]harlatans, pimps, juvenile delinquents and prostitutes rub[bed] elbows with “people of quality”, who come to experience the thrill transmitted by the promiscuity of the rabble…. [The o]bservance of social rules threatened at each crossroads to completely explode….] (Lurcel 1983. 7).^l0

From a Bakhtinian point of view, Piron's association with the “théâtre de la foire” establishes his relevance to carnival. He contributed to a theater which resembles Bakhtinian carnival but of which Bakhtin, judging from his short discussion of rococo and enlightenment carnival, was unaware. This theater was clearly tied to the laughter of the market-place, and was located in a space where social hierarchies were momentarily suspended. In addition, the Paris fairs took place during two religious observances: the Foire de Saint-Germain began on 3 February and was authorized to continue for two months, even if that period of time included Holy Week; the Foire de Saint-Laurent did not have a fixed opening day, but lasted approximately two months and always ended on 29 September, the feast of St Michel (Lagrave 1972, 32).¹¹

Piron was thus quite an interesting man: he frequented the salons and wrote for the Comédie-Française, but he also wrote erotic poetry and plays for the “foires”. His Rabelaisian taste for wine was legendary, as were his ‘bons mots’. Two biographical details may be responsible for Piron's current obscurity: his “Ode à Priape” and his life-long feud with Voltaire. The “Ode à Priape”, probably his very first attempt at writing, is credited with preventing Piron from being elected to the Académie Française (Dufay 1928b, xii–xiii, xiv). It abounds in obscenities and sexual situations, and was considered so scandalous that subsequent biographers “forgot” to mention it (1928b, xiv), while, in the Oeuvres complètes, Dufay dares to print it only with ellipses (1928a, 123). As to his feud with Voltaire, bad feelings between the two writers began with their very first encounter and continued until Piron's death fifty years later (Dufay 1928b, xxviii). Piron claimed to have written over one hundred epigrams directly against Voltaire (Dufay 1928b, xxix), while the latter, in his own writings, preferred fewer and more indirect barbs, at least until his adversary's death. For example, in his autobiography Voltaire relates the story of the Chevalier de la Barre who is “condemned at Abbéville […] to suffer the punishment of parricides” partially because he had recited Piron's infamous ode.¹² In another rare reference, Voltaire's “La Vanité” paraphrases a few lines from Piron's La Métromanie, in order to ridicule the latter: “Piron seul eut raison, quand, dans un goût nouveau, | Il fit ce vers heureux, digne de son tombeau: | Ci-gît qui ne fut rien” [Piron alone was right, when, in a new taste, He wrote these appropriate lines, worthy of his own epitaph: Here lies he who was not anything] (Voltaire 1877, 118)¹³. Three years after his death, Rigoley de Juvigny published the first edition of his Oeuvres complètes, an event which offered Voltaire the chance to settle their feud once and for all in his own favor. Jealous and furious because of all the attention this publication received, he began to spread negative and false information about Piron. While referring to his own well-known connection to the King of Prussia, Voltaire pretended to have met Piron only three times in his life, and claimed that the latter was only a virtually unknown “auteur forain” [fair author] who certainly did not merit such prestigious treatment (Chaponnière 1935, 198). Despite Voltaire's efforts to the contrary, the following passage excerpted from a contemporary tribute indicates that Piron was in fact renowned during his lifetime:

M. Piron a été enterré hier. […] C'est sans doute une trés grande perte pour la littérature. Quoiqu'il ne fît rien depuis longtemps, il contenoit au moins le faux goût & s'opposoit à ses progrès: il formoit quelques gens de lettres qui 'étoient rangés sous ses étendards, & dès lors s'affichoient pour ennemis de M. de Voltaire, car il y avoit une haine irréconciliable entre ces deux hommes célèbres. Un des grands regrets de M. Piron en mourant, a été de ne pas survivre à son adversaire. […] C'est l'homme le plus fertile en bons mots qui ait peut-être jamais existé. On ne l' a jamais trouvé court, & dans la vieillesse où il étoit parvenu, il avoit encore la riposte vive & heureuse.

[M. Piron was buried yesterday. […] It is without a doubt a great loss for literature. Even though he hadn't written anything in a long time, he kept bad taste in check and opposed its progress: he trained several people in letters who rallied around him, and who henceforth flaunted themselves as M. de Voltaire's enemies, because there was an irreconcilable hatred between the two famous men. […] He was perhaps the most prolific man in terms of witticisms who ever existed. He was never at a loss, and even as old as he was, he still had a lively and felicitous retort.]¹⁴

”La Puce” is but one of Piron's many pieces. This narrative poem, whose connection with French rococo style has been previously studied (Brady 1978, 87; Nell 1989, 45 and 266–267), relates the story of a young girl, fifteen-year-old Agnès, who has resisted Cupid's charms and is thus a virgin. Cupid, angry at her impudence, decides to “enjoy her charms”: he transforms himself into a flea and proceeds to do just that. As he hops from one spot to another on her body — biting as he goes — the poor girl, ignorant of what is going on, rips off her clothing, searching for the source of her irritation. The flea, not satisfied, continues to hop towards her vagina. When he arrives, the girl's personified “charms” are languorous and sleepy; once Agnès goes after him with her finger, the “charms” awaken and Agnès swoons with pleasure as she reaches orgasm. Delighted with her discovery, Agnès recommences her “game”; on the other hand, Cupid, barely able to escape unscathed, hurries off to warn Venus of his blunder: women will no longer be interested in him once masturbation catches on. And as a matter of fact, Agnès' practice becomes quite the rage in convents, where instructions are engraved in bronze.

The remainder of this essay will analyze “La Puce” from the perspective of carnival. Camivalesque elements are utilized in a non-traditional way: the narrative voice is a representative of official culture, which paradoxically attempts to utilize carnival to further its cause. Similar to the analyst's/ inquisitor's gaze in Clément's long chapter on hysteria, “The Guilty One”, Cupid attempts to dominate Agnès by systematically reifying and dehumanizing her. Three different avenues relating to “La Puce” will be explored in this study: first, I will examine how the interplay between the official and the carnivalesque in this poem correlates with the occurrence of the “Greek romance” chronotope; then I will discuss how elements of carnival are utilized paradoxically by the representative of official culture (Cupid); finally, I will demonstrate both how that official culture loses control and how a certain rococo version of carnival does in fact come about.

THE INTENT: “OFFICIALIZING” WOMAN WITHIN ROCOCO ”ADVENTURE TIME”

There are two chronotopic patterns which occur in “La Puce”. On the one hand, by using the rococo version of the sleeping-beauty scenario, Piron illustrates the Rabelaisian chronotope's tension between “official and unofficial”.¹⁵ On the other, aspects of Greek romance chronotope are employed in order to maintain the kind of stasis characteristic of rococo style. By simultaneously desiring to effect change — through the domination of women by incorporating them into the patriarchal order — and to maintain the status quo, Cupid's intent with regards to Agnès is self-contradictory from the start.

In “La Puce”, the main character's indifference to physical love as well as her eventual “awakening” tempt the modern reader to link her to the ”sleeping-beauty” motif most often seen in fairy tales. Bruno Bettelheim sees in this pattern the inevitable feminine awakening to sexual maturity after an extended period of inwardly directed reflection, but the element of violence — neutralized through the poet's humorous narration — renders this interpretation problematic (1989, 225). Physical and figurative awakenings to sexuality, which we might interpret as seduction scenes, are a recurring concern in rococo poetry and represent an expression of the rococo's “cult of visual and transient love” (Brady 1979, 227).

This pattern can be illustrated with examples from two other rococo poems. In an untitled poem by the Abbé Chaulieu, the beautiful Madelon not only sleeps but slumbers so deeply that sexual fondling does not initially succeed in waking her:

   Lors m'approchant de la Belle endormie.

Tout bellement la pris entre mes bras;

Et d'une main qu'Amour rendoit hardie.

Je découvris ses plus secrets appas.

Dormoit toujours la gentille Pucelle,

Ou le feignait.

[When I approached the sleeping Beauty, I gently took her in my arms, and with a hand that Love rendered audacious, I laid bare her most secret charms. The nice Maiden continued to sleep or pretended to.] (Brady 1995, poem 160, 11. 8–13)

Only the sex act itself rouses her: “Du premier coup la tirai du sommeil” [With the first thrust I woke her up] (1. 24). In another example whose violent undertones renders it particularly interesting, Dorat's “L'Abeille justifiée”, the voyeuristic narrator enjoys watching the wind undress a sleeping Thaïs and then decides to try to contrive kissing her breast without rousing her. The narrator's ardor apparently gets the better of him: she does awaken and blames a bee for her pain: “C'est donc toi qui me fais souffrir I Par une piqûre si cruelle?” [So it's you who makes me suffer with a sting so cruel?] (Donville n.d., 240, 11. 70–71).

In “La Puce”, Agnès is not literally asleep, but she is “innocent” or at least appears innocent (”[elle] passoit pour fille sage” [(she) seemed to be a good girl], 1. 19), and she is passive and sexually inactive. While girls of her low social status are expected to comply with the sexual desires of men, she systematically rebuffs their advances. Cupid is infuriated: “Dérangeons tout ce vain étalage I Chez cet objet pour nous indifférent” [Let's disturb the vain display of this object who is indifferent to us] (11. 52–53). Her name, Agnès (from the Latin agnus or “lamb”), accentuates her passivity and her role as victim. She is ignorant: “[elle] n'étoit fille à découverte aucune” [(she) was a girl who had never made a single discovery] (1. 11 ). She is protected, not only emotionally — “Elle portoit un coeur I bien cuirassé” [She wore a very well-armored heart] (11. 29–30) — but physically — her vagina is said to be “[une] enceinte aux alarmes fermées” [a stronghold closed off to attack] (1. 99). If Agnès is not literally sleeping, the ”inhabitants” within her vagina certainly are, as the effects of Cupid's arrival demonstrates: “Les citoyens de ce séjour heureux, | Les doux plaisirs, les charmantes ivresses, | Jusques alors oisifs et langoureux” [The citizens of this happy home, the sweet pleasures, the charming raptures, up until now idle and languorous] (11. 120–122). The narrative voice firmly asserts that Agnès' attitude towards sex and chastity are out of the ordinary and that Amour should expect compliance from her: not only is sexual activity with men a “tribute” due the god of love (”un tribut”, 1. 111), but also any woman's vagina is not her own — it constitutes divine property (”Fief en tous lieux relevant de Cythère” [Universally known as Cythera's fief], 1. 92). Hence Cupid's actions and motives are legitimate and supported by the “official” point of view: not only is he a god, but the social and political order of (hu)man society expects compliance as well.

Moreover, the treatment of the female body in “La Puce” and other rococo poems is consistent with the “official” tendency to hierarchize (PDP, 10). As seeing, knowing subject, the poetic narrator maintains a position of privilege. The flea, for his part, although physically small and insignificant, is entitled to dominate her due to his patriarchal (he is male) and political (he is a god and thus outranks her) superiority. Agnès, however, is reduced to an object, although a beautiful and erotic one. Agnès' reification is exemplified in the description of her faceless body:¹⁶ first, the narrator describes her clothed (ll. 36–51), then the description is repeated as she performs her “striptease”. The patriarchal gaze maintains control, while Agnès, powerless, remains unaware that she is being watched and violated.

Hence, while rococo poets portray these awakenings to sexual activity as seduction scenes, a Bakhtinian approach to “La Puce” emphasizes the interplay in this pattern between the official culture and the unofficial. According to Bakhtin, two ways of living existed simultaneously in the Middle Ages: the serious and hierarchical “official life”, and the grotesque and ambivalent “life of the carnival square” (PDP, 129). As in the excerpted rococo poems discussed above, voyeuristic strategies are utilized in “La Puce” in order to incorporate into the official (patriarchal) order a woman who is “unofficial” because she is sleeping, innocent, or otherwise unaware. Moreover, a male narrator plans to control her through a strategy of sexual domination: by having sex with her without her consent.

The sexual awakening of “sleeping beauties”, such as Piron's Agnès, Chaulieu's Madelon, or Dorat's Thaï's can also be likened to Bakhtin's Greek romance chronotope. While the genre's “typical composite schema”¹⁷ is not present verbatim in these scenarios, the abstract character of their time and space as well as their lack of narrative progress link them to Greek romance. Thus, these scenes often take place in an idyllic setting, out of doors, in the midst of nature but bereft of any “indications of historical time, [lacking any] identifying traces of the era” (FTC, 91). For example, the only indication of the location of Chaulieu's seduction scene is “sur la verte fougère” (l. 2). Dorat's natural setting is more fully elaborated:

Dans la chaleur d'un jour d'été,

Non loin d'un ruisseau qui murmure,

A l'abri d'un bois écarté,

Thaïs dormait sous la verdure.

La voûte épaisse des rameaux.

Brisant les traits de la lumière,

Entretenait sous ces berceaux

Une ombre fraîche et solitaire.

[In the heat of a summer day, not far from a murmuring brook, sheltered by an isolated wood, Thaïs was sleeping under the greenery. The thick vault of branches, disrupting the rays of light, maintained under these cradles a fresh and solitary shade.] (Donville n.d., 237–238)

On the other hand, Agnès’ story is accompanied by certain social details. We have evidence of an aristocracy (“marquis”, 1. 23) and hierarchical relationships (“suivante d'une dame”, 1. 14), as well as articles of clothing, but no specific evidence of a historical time-frame. Furthermore, the “sleep” element, as well as conventional, Greek names (“Thaï's” for example) and characters (Cupid, zephyrs and the like), adds to the aura of mythical time as well as to the passages’ profound erotic associations, at least for men. Since the women are either asleep or unaware when they are fondled or molested, and since the men's actions are initially misattributed (to a bee, to a flea), there is at least the pretense that “nothing happened”. The women do not know what happened, if anything. In the case of “La Puce”, the hypothetical absence of action between point A — Cupid's decision to seduce Agnès (roughly corresponding to Greek romance's “flare-up of passion” between the two lovers) — and point B — the sexual encounter (marriage in Greek romance) — calls to mind the “adventure time” of Greek romance chronotope (FTC, 89). In Bakhtin's view, it is not point A and point B, the two “poles of plot movement”, that count in Greek romance, but the “gap” between them: “it is not around these [poles] that the novel is structured; rather it is around that which lies […] between them. But in essence, nothing need lie between them” (FTC, 89). Similarly, the desire for nothing to happen represents an essential characteristic of rococo style and mentality. Jean Weisgerber calls this tendency “le présentisme” [presentism] and “la valorisation de l'instant” [valorization of the moment] (1991, 72, 76). The point of rococo emphasis on the here and now, according to Patrick Brady, is the necessity of avoiding the acknowledgment of death:

To the stumbling, painful steps of real life and real human beings — unstructured and unbeautiful, disturbing in their aimlessness, frightening in their orientation towards death — [rococo society] opposefs] the artificial, highly patterned steps of the minuet, consoling and reassuring in their predictability. (1979, 113)

Physical love, even if satisfied, is ephemeral: “rococo hedonism does […] recognize that obstacles may be a source of pleasure and indeed that desire may actually die if satisfied” (1979, 228). Hence, the ultimate rococo desire is for “nothing to happen” — precisely through the occurrence of “adventure time” obstacles, as in the “sleeping-beauty” poems described above — because when nothing happens, the narrative cannot move forward toward death.

Thus, the dilemma for Cupid in “La Puce” is how to arrange for “nothing to happen” and yet to co-opt the sexuality of an unruly woman. For, because of Agnès’ infractions against official patriarchy — her “radical negation, silence, withdrawal, and invisibility” (Russo 1986, 213) — the “official” patriarchal order must be imposed upon her, she must be “put into circulation”: “[from the point of view of patriarchy,] women […] need good manners — conventions that keep them under control. They have to be taught how to live” (Clément 1986, 53, 29). Cupid's method of accomplishing this task ironically brings about his downfall: he utilizes components of the Rabelaisian chronotope, a chronotope which assumes that carnival will take place. Yet if Clément is correct, the occurrence of festival implies the potential empowerment of women, not merely their domination by patriarchal representatives.

PARADOXICAL MEANS: USING CARNIVALESQUE METHODS TO MAINTAIN OFFICIAL ORDER

While, in Greek Romance, time and space are identical and do not move the narrative forward, the Rabelaisian chronotope expands both components. Bakhtin further notes that positively valorized objects and characters are enlarged (pearls, for example), while those that are not valued are shrunk (cobblestones) (FTC, 167). By expanding the female body, a task which he accomplishes by shrinking himself, Cupid would seem, then, automatically to tread on dangerous ground if he wishes to debase and dominate. Furthermore, contrary to the situation in Greek Romance, change is produced in the Rabelaisian chronotope as the dialogical narrative moves forward in time. Precisely because of these conflicts, the superimposition of Greek Romance and Rabelaisian chronotope in “La Puce” is doomed to backfire. Yet the god turned flea uses specifically Rabelaisian carnivalistic techniques in order to attain his “official” goal of monologizing the feminine. Cupid utilizes three components of carnival in his relations with Agnès: the banquet, uncrownings, and laughter.

The Banquet. Bakhtin asserts that the banquet is closely linked with popular-festive forms. As in Pantagruel, one possible site for the feast is the female body:

The wide-open mouth is the leading theme of Pantagruel, with the theme of swallowing, which is on the borderline between body and food images. Another image is the open womb of Pantagruel's mother in the throes of childbirth, from which issued a caravan of wagons loaded with salted food. We see how closely food images are connected with those of the body and of procreation (fertility, growth, birth). (RW, 279)

Bakhtin, then, envisions the female body as incarnating two major functions, eating and creating. In “La Puce”, these two components are dissociated and antagonistic. Cupid, the “wide-open mouth”, transformed into the flea, becomes a veritable biting machine: his successive attacks upon Agnès take up one third of the poem (ll. 52–106). Agnès, on the other hand, has the potential for creation, but has sought to maintain a closed womb. Cupid goes about forcibly opening it, first of all, by consuming her body, an action which is just the opposite of what Bakhtin describes: rather than “the fusion of the devouring and devoured body” (RW, 279), there is an opposition of the two. Agnès is the feast, rather than one of the feast's participants: hence her body is described either in organic and often edible terms (lilies, roses, strawberries, milk etc.), or more generically as “bons morceaux à gruger” [tasty snacks] (l. 64), “bonne chere” [sumptuous meal”] (l. 67).

By assuming a form which by nature bites and eats, and by using consumption to “open the womb”, Cupid's implicit aim, if we accept Bakhtin's close association of mouth and womb, is to appropriate the power of feminine creation. The ultimate goal of Cupid as phallus, flea, and even sperm is to devour the womb, thus to negate the power of feminine creation, and, in the words of Hélène Cixous, “to be god the mother” (1986, 66). His actions are intended to render visible, at least to narrator and reader, male primacy in procreation.¹⁸ Yet the narrative in “La Puce” is designed to allow us to view the scene of creation as a visualization of male initiative, triumph and domination during reproduction through the effacement of the female womb. In sum, then, Cupid's own fear of castration — reflected at the beginning of the poem in his anger at Agnès’ refusal to engage in heterosexual relations — is projected onto woman through his desire to castrate her, to “eat” her womb and thus to negate her sexual and creative locus.

Uncrownings. Two uncrownings take place in “La Puce”. Cupid uncrowns himself through his travesty. He cross-dresses as an insect, while Agnès’ undressed body becomes both battleground and the object of that battle. Agnès had adorned herself for a holiday — significantly a kind of carnival, albeit degraded — but Cupid's attack “uncrowns” her. According to Bakhtin, the object of uncrowning in carnival is the roi pour rire (king of fools), originally a clown (RW, 197). Agnès must be stripped of clothing in order to show her true nature. For the narrator has already hinted that she is not what she seems: “farouche elle avoit l'âme, | Non par vertu mais par é(ll.15–16); “[elle] passoit pour fille sage” [(she) seemed to be a good girl] (l. 19). Before Cupid's attack, we see her masked by clothing, according to the narrator. Moreover, her clothing is a boundary which encloses her body. Foreshadowing the “striptease”, her body is described as being held prisoner in her clothing (“Dans un corset sa taille prisonnière” [Her corset-imprisoned waist], l. 42). At the same time, there are signs of the erotic female body soon to appear. Her skirt is light (“légère”, l. 44), suggesting teasing transparency. The waist is tight, the stockings are tight — so much so that they look like her skin. While her head is wreathed with flowers, her bust is decorated with a single rosebud whose blooming (“naissante”, l. 39) parallels the bosom's potential to burst out of its boundaries.

Indeed, once Cupid launches his attack, the boundaries between body and exterior world are eliminated one by one. Frantically searching for the source of the painful bites, Agnès tears at her clothes. She rips off her corset, throws it, grabs her blouse, revealing her breasts, and finally unfastens her skirt, hysterically looking “toute emue” [beside herself] (l. 77). In a way similar to that of the violent nopces à mitaine, and their accompanying banquets, which Bakhtin links to camivalesque uncrownings (RW, 200),¹⁹ Agnès’ body is debased through the violent character of the flea bites:

[Le roi pour rire] is abused and beaten when the time of his reign is over, just as the carnival dummy of winter or of the dying year is mocked, beaten, torn to pieces, burned, or drowned even in our time. […] The abuse and thrashing are equivalent to a change of costume, to a metamorphosis. Abuse reveals the other, true face of the abused, it tears off his disguise and mask.²⁰ (RW, 197. emphasis added)

As in the nopces à mitaine, Agnès’ injuries are enumerated: the flea jumps “Au front, au sein, à la main […] laissant partout une vive piqûre” [to her forehead, to her breast, to her hand […] leaving everywhere a painful sting] (ll. 58–59).

Laughter. The comic element in this poem is thus closely linked with feminine performance and eroticism on the one hand and debasement and violence on the other. Cupid's attack causes Agnès to “make a spectacle of herself” (Russo 1986, 213), first for the all-but-invisible Cupid, then for the male narrator, and finally for the reader. The specularization of the female, as has been widely noted, functions as an integral part of the power of the male gaze. Catherine Clément has linked the camivalesque to the hysterical woman, whose behavior is watched and analyzed by a judgmental patriarchal gaze — Freud's, for example:

an audience, ready to satisfy its fantastic desire, is necessary for the spectacular side of sorcery and hysteria. It is, above all, an audience of men: inquisitors, magistrates, doctors — the circle of doctors with their fascinated eyes, who surround the hysteric, their bodies tensed to see the tensed body of the possessed woman. (1986, 10).

Among other examples, Clément refers to a southern Italian legend of hysterical women who imagine that they have been bitten by tarantulas. In order to be cured of the illnesses — “depression, convulsions, dizziness, and migraines” — which result from the bite, they must “do […] the spider” or “danc[e] the spider”, in other words, ritually dance the tarantella (19). During this dance, which is performed accompanied by an orchestra and in front of an audience, the affected woman must “expe[l] the foreign body, the venom, through a violent and irksome action” (20). A cure is thus only possible through abreaction (14). To do this, she must abandon “civilized human behavior” and become like the spider itself, like an animal (21).²¹ Similar to the medieval nopce à mitaines, the debasing of Agnès’ body is comical. Unlike carnival laughter, not all participate; a string of male gazes derides her (from Cupid's supposedly first-hand experience, to the vicarious enjoyment of narrator and reader, respectively). Subjected to this series of gazes, Agnès’ performance is designed to portray her as simultaneously rogue (“[she] seemed to be a good girl”, l. 19), clown (e.g. her humorous attempt to find the flea) and fool (e.g. Cupid has really fooled her).

As in the case of the Rabelaisian giants, Agnès’ body is rendered grotesque through enlargement, a technique accomplished by shrinking Cupid. In fact, three components contained in the story of the birth of Gargantua are present in “La Puce”: the mother's body whose womb and bowel are conflated; the father's penis; and the baby. Paul Allen Miller's evaluation of Gargantua's birth thus applies to the ending of “La Puce”: “The womb and the bowels, sexuality and shit, birth and death are here tied up into one ‘grotesque knot’ of camivalesque vitality” (see his contribution to this volume, 150). Gargamelle, after having eaten too much tripe, goes into labor. She complains that her present state is due to Grandgousier's penis and wishes that he had cut it off; he cheerfully offers to oblige. The Midwives mistake her intestines and excrement for the baby, and give her an astringent which closes her anus so tightly that it would be impossible to open it with one's teeth. Gargantua later makes his way out of the womb à l'envers (Rabelais 1990, 20–21). The version of this scene in “La Puce” recalls Gargantua's birth: Agnès, on whose body Cupid has fed, experiences pain all over her body, but then that pain is concentrated in the “material bodily lower stratum”, specifically in her vagina, which the flea opens precisely with his teeth. While Cupid as flea had assumed the role of the gaping mouth, he is now engulfed by a gaping vagina, the site of both birth and death. Agnès’ pain, like that of Gargamelle, is due to a penis, represented in Piron by the penetration of the flea. In her successful attempts to neutralize and thus to castrate Cupid, she experiences orgasm and expels him, rendering him both aborted fetus and excrement (in a figurative sense).²² In addition, Agnès’ discovery gives women henceforth the possibility of autonomous sexual activity, rendering Cupid ineffectual and himself uncrowned (castrated). For this reason, he narrowly escapes to go complain to Venus that he fears that his throne will be abandoned. This newly redefined lower stratum of the female body, then, because of its size, power, unruliness, creativity and “vitality”, threatens not only the flea but, on a cosmic level, patriarchy itself.

Cupid's expulsion from Agnès’ vagina fits in well with Catherine Clément's analysis of the “contagion” of medieval sorceresses. Location of the reproductive act or of its negation, the vagina in “La Puce” functions in a way similar to the medieval midwife who had the power both to deliver children and to perform abortions (Clément 1986, 31). As infant, Cupid embodies patriarchal control, but when he barely escapes Agnès’ powerful self-aborting womb, he signifies bodily waste, which, according to Clément's account, was thought to spread the witch's contagion (32–37). Cupid as Law or “rule” — règle in French — has been turned upside down by that ultimate unruliness, the periodicity of women's menstrual cycle — règles — a phenomenon which patriarchy can never rule (29). The official system's fragility is revealed: if Cupid's gaze corresponds to that of the inquisitor/psychoanalyst at the beginning of the poem, his exit à l'envers transforms him into the product of the witch's magic.

As the preceding analysis has demonstrated, Piron participated not only in a historical carnival, that of the “foire”, but also in a form of rococo carnival that emerged from this “hedonistic ‘boudoir’ atmosphere” in which “life [is] turned inside out” (RW, 119). In “La Puce”, Cupid's carnival reveals itself to be an ambivalent one whose object is the imposition of official rather than camivalesque order. From Cupid's point of view, not “everyone communes in the carnival act”; rather, he deploys Greek romance chronotope in an attempt to ensure the maintenance of masculine dominance (PDP, 122): Agnès does not consciously and willingly initiate the ritual but is rather compelled to submit. Yet her grotesque spectacle, however initially comical to the reader/spectator, eventually demonstrates her power over Cupid. Through her discovery of female masturbation, Agnès embodies the regenerative nature of carnival, confirms the patriarchal fear of the unruly female body and affirms the productive nature of carnival: “This carnival sense of the world possesses a mighty life-creating and transforming power, an indestructible vitality” (PDP, 107). At the same time, Agnès plays an active role in the festival which resembles more Clément's carnival and less Bakhtin's. Furthermore, the power of feminine carnival may win the battle, but it does not win the war.

I will conclude this essay by returning to my earlier question: was Bakhtin right? Is rococo carnival characterized by “the gay positive tone of laughter”? Does “rococo perpetuat[e] after a fashion the traditional camivalesque spirit” (RW, 119)? In my opinion, Bakhtin is only partially correct: while the familiar signifiers of carnival are clearly present (lower bodily stratum, interplay between official and unofficial, monological and dialogical) as well as variants of others (public laughter becomes private, for instance), the signified has slipped (Bakhtin's “camivalesque spirit”): the final tone of “La Puce” is only superficially “positive” and “gay”. For once the narrator's male gaze recognizes its camivalesque error, it relegates Agnès’ “unruliness” to a structure whose representation in eighteenth-century French literature must be characterized as sterile and stifling and which signifies ultimate patriarchal control: the convent.²³

APPENDIX: “LA PUCE” (PIRON 1928, X: 157–161)

THE FLEA²⁴

Ll. 1–13: Chance alone, without the help of genius, is sometimes the father of invention; it enriches, by its productions, even those people who never think about it in their whole lives: one sees it every day in chemistry. Nature holds all her treasures open to the ignorant and the experts alike. Everything depends on experiencing her: without seeking her, she often reveals herself. We see this through the example of Agnès, who was a girl who had never made a single discovery, but who, one morning, made one of which the nuns will speak highly until the end of time.

Ll. 14–33: Here's what happened. Agnès was a lady's maid; she had a wild soul, not out of virtue but temperament. This is what happens when heaven treats a woman severely. Young Agnès seemed to be a good girl; she was beautiful and was only fifteen. With Agnès, the neighborhood lackeys only encountered claws and teeth. Young marquis visited her mistress in order to see Agnès; but, making no distinction, Agnès was a relentless tigress: she did not take social status into consideration. Love (Cupid), in order to make a dent in her heart, had shot many an arrow at her but to no avail. She wore a very well-armored heart; so that in his fury, Love swore to avenge this outrage; but his anger fell upon its author, since Agnès turned everything to her advantage.

Ll. 34–49: In the season of lovable springtime, on a Sunday or holiday, it is said, Agnès had adorned her head with the tender enamel with which Flora decorates the fields. Between the two mountains which formed lily-white breasts, a budding rose was placed, emphasizing their delightful whiteness and bestowing upon them a new coloring. Her corset-imprisoned waist could be easily spanned by two hands; under a sheer petticoat would sometimes appear a linen stocking — so tight and pale to the eye — that one would have believed that one saw a nude leg. In short, enclosed in a shapely slipper, her little foot inspired love.

Ll. 50–67: The winged child, more mischievous than a page, as I said, held a grudge against her. “Now's the time”, he said. “There! Let's attack and disturb the vain display of this object who is indifferent to us.” As soon as he says this, he is transformed: he becomes a flea. First he jumps to her neck, to her forehead, to her breast, to her hand, goes crazy, leaving everywhere a painful sting. Our beauty, very sensitive to the attack, tries to find the flea, and wants to give him what he deserves; but Cupid escapes with a jump and gently slips beneath her corset. He makes a killing there and doesn't want to leave. Little girls are tasty snacks: Love often has them as his regular fare. If, as he, I knew how to avenge myself, by Saint John!, I would have a sumptuous meal.

Ll. 68–89: Agnès finally tears off her corset, throws it far away, pulls off her blouse and reveals two milky mountains each topped with a strawberry. She inspects and examines all the places where the besieging enemy is hidden; but he was already far from her gaze and was biting a snow-white thigh. This last blow augments her displeasure. Beside herself, she undoes her skirt; simultaneously, a thousand amorous zephyrs caress that which is exposed to view, and fighting in a crowd at Love's side, for a happy and sweet preference, they save him from the prompt vengeance which was awaiting him at the heart of pleasurable sensations. By means of a jump, of a leap, the little god maintains his mascarade, frolics to and fro, and incessantly cleaves the air. He comes to offer himself of his own accord to the beauty, then he escapes as promptly as lightning, and does a hundred tricks like a true punchinello.

Ll. 90–107: During this game, Love had his eye on a ruby portal located in the vicinity of a certain bush, universally known as Cythera's fief, but for which the beauty, unjust and foolhardy, heatedly contended with Aphrodite. A thousand times more than human nature, the immortals are jealous of their rights; furthermore, it was a question of a domain to which only kings can pretend. Within its walls which were closed off to attack, the delights of the senses reigned in peace; a spring enflamed with swoons and ecstasies ran there. Against such a stronghold courage is needed; Love has an ample supply. He makes the attack, forces his way in, and storms this charming estate, in spite of the resistance's efforts.

Ll. 108–111: Agnès, calm your nascent anger. Fear nothing for this charming abode; if Love is the first to become master of it, it is a tribute due only to Love.

Ll. 112–146: But these are ineffectual arguments! One hurries to avenge oneself; a pink finger is armed with this purpose, single-handedly holds the trapped enemy, and pressing him back, attacks to the bitter end. Cupid flees by a narrow path; he is pursued and the attack is increased. The avenging finger puts the whole neighborhood in an uproar and the abode is quite troubled by it. The citizens of this happy home, the sweet pleasures, the charming raptures, up until now idle and languorous, because of this combat, come out of their indolence; each with a teasing and caressing flight, presses around its charming mother and spills over her a ravishing charm, which makes her soon forget her anger. This avenging finger, with murder in mind, causes a thousand delights to be bom because of its blows. Love himself is completely astounded and already repents of his malicious intentions. He fears seeing his throne abandoned and his altars deprived of sacrifices. Finally, pleasure from its palace pushes a dark cloud over Agnès’ eye; she faints, she falls senseless. Love escapes and runs frightened to fill Venus with an unforeseen alarm. Barely recovered from her ecstasy, the lovable child recommenced this game; she took a liking to it and shortly, because of her, the instructions were known thoughout the universe. But night and day amongst the convent people, it became the fashion, and this happy story was quickly written in bronze so that it would always be remembered.

NOTES

1. For studies which utilize the Bakhtinian concept of dialogism precisely for the analysis of genres from which Bakhtin “excludes” them, see Miller on lyric (1993), and Goodkin on theater (1992).

2. The interest in feminism and Bakhtin persists in other essays as well. Shepherd 1993, for example, contains an entire section of essays devoted to the relationship between these two topics.

3. In a recent article, Robin Howells approaches rococo and carnival in a highly unsatisfactory way. Not only does he fail to refer concretely to Bakhtin (e.g. with quotations or by mentioning Bakhtin's works, either in the notes or in the bibliography), but he also ignores Bakhtin's own evaluation of rococo carnival. In addition, Howells claims to follow both Patrick Brady and Roger Laufer in his approach to rococo (1993, 195); this claim is problematic, however, since Brady completely rejects Laufer's viewpoint (Brady 1964, 34).

4. Marcel Raymond criticizes the feminine aspects of rococo style in an analogous way, when comparing them to those of the more “energetic” baroque: “[c'est un] baroque amenuisé, d'une vitalité plus médiocre, plus chiffonné et désireux d'apporter au spectateur, dans l'immédiat, le plus de plaisir possible” [(it is a) thinner baroque, of a more mediocre vitality, more fatigued and eager to bring to the spectator, as soon as possible, the most pleasure possible] (1962, 126).

5. I refer the reader to Dufay's thirty-page “Bibliographic sommaire”, which ends the last volume to his edition of Piron's complete works (Dufay 1928a).

6. Mme Debar remained Piron's mistress for twenty years; they were married in 1741, which legalized “une situation qui n'était ignorée de personne” [a situation that everyone knew about] (Dufay 1928b, xxxiii).

7. While Dufay does briefly mention the “théâtre de la foire” (1928b, xxxii–xliii), two other studies are devoted to the genre: Maurice Albert's Le Théâtre de la foire (1990) and Michelle Venard's more recent La Foire entre en scène (1985). Dominique Lurcel's anthology, Le Théâtre de la foire (1983), Henri Lagrave's Le Théâtre et le public de 1715 à 1750 (1972) and George Evans’ recent article (1993) also provide important information and insights.

8. Because the Comédie-Française was experiencing a serious crisis — the plays produced there were known to be dull and so no one wanted to go to the Comédie — a number of measures were taken to prevent plays from being staged at the Foires.

9. Henri Lagrave maintains that whereas the lower classes were mostly interested in the acrobatic performances, while the aristocrats attended the plays, the only lower-class group which consistently and “abundantly” frequented the theater per se was that of the domestics and lackeys, who were often allowed free entrance (1972, 255).

10. All translations within square brackets are my own. The entire text in French of “La Puce” is found in an appendix at the end of the article, together with the full text of my prose translation.

11. According to Robin Howells, “the fair […] is among the most camivalesque of all referents” (1993, 193). Yet Howells fails to mention anything about the milieu at the fair, and merely notes the presence of the word “fair” in the titles of some of the plays of the period.

12. This quotation is from Theodore Besterman's English translation of Commentaire historique sur les oeuvres de I'auteur de la Henriade, which Voltaire wrote in either 1775 or 1776 (Besterman 1976, 673).

13. Piron, never wishing for Voltaire to have the last word, replied:

En deux mots voulez-vous connaître | Le rimeur dijonais et le parisien? | Le premier ne fut rien, ni ne voulut rien être. | L'autre voulut tout être, et ne fut presque rien. | Autre | On nous a bien dit que Voltaire | Ne fut jamais qu'un plagiaire. | Admirez le tour du larron. | Le trait même dont il égorge, | Ou prétend égorger Piron | Il le lui vole dans sa forge.

 

[Would you like a brief introduction to the Dijonais and Parisian rhymesters? The first wasn't anything and didn't want to be anything. The second wanted to be everything and was almost nothing. | Other: It's true that we've been told that Voltaire was only a plagiarist. One has to admire the thief's strategy: the method which he claims to use to cut Piron's throat is stolen from Piron's own works.] (Voltaire 1972, 614).

14. From the 23 January 1773 entry of Bachaumont's Mémoires secrets pour servir à l'histoire de la République des lettres (London: J. Adamson, 1784–1789) (quoted in Dufay 1928b, xlxix).

15. This tension is clear in the Rabelais book if not in the chronotope article itself: “these forms of protocol and ritual based on laughter and consecrated by tradition […] were sharply distinct from the serious official, ecclesiastical, feudal, and political cult forms and ceremonials” (RW, 5).

16. Agnès’ hair does put in a brief appearance toward the beginning of the poem: “du tendre émail dont Flore orne les champs, | La jeune Agnès avoit paré la tête” (ll. 36–37) [Agnès had adorned her head with the tender enamel with which Flora decorates the fields].

17. “There is a boy and girl of marriageable age. Their lineage is unknown, mysterious (but not always: there is, for example, no such instance in Tatius). They are remarkable for their exceptional beauty. They are also exceptionally chaste. They meet each other unexpectedly, usually during some festive holiday. A sudden and instantaneous passion flares up between them that is as irresistible as fate, like an incurable disease. However, the marriage cannot take place straightway. They are confronted with obstacles that retard and delay their union. The lovers are parted, they seek one another, find one another; again they lose each other, again they find each other. There are the usual obstacles and adventures of lovers: the abduction of the bride on the eve of the wedding, the absence of parental consent (if parents exist), a different bridegroom and bride intended for either of the lovers (false couples), the flight of the lovers, their journey, a storm at sea, a shipwreck, a miraculous rescue, an attack by pirates, captivity and prison, an attempt on the innocence of the hero and heroine, the offering-up of the heroine as a purifying sacrifice, wars, battles, being sold into slavery, presumed deaths, disguising one's identity, recognition and failures of recognition, presumed betrayals, attempts on chastity and fidelity, false accusations of crimes, court trials, court inquiries into the chastity and fidelity of the lovers. The heroes find their parents (if unknown). Meetings with unexpected friends or enemies play an important role, as do fortune-telling, prophecy, prophetic dreams, premonitions and sleeping potions. The novel ends happily with the lovers united in marriage” (FTC, 87–88).

18. How can one know what happens in the womb? Catherine Clément replies: “We find ourselves in a kind of primal scene, which is internalized to the space within the body. The center of that space is opaque and organic; there the father-penis encounters the mother-belly. One can't see any more” (1986, 52).

19. “At the given signal the wedding ritual begins. Then, when the food and wine are brought in, the traditional cuffing is started” (RW, 201).

20. Patrick Brady does imply that nudity is a type of costume, at least in the plastic arts, where women appear as nude goddesses (as in Fragonard's Diane sortant du bain) yet retain their elaborate hairdressing and jewelry (1984, 70).

21. Agnès, even before the attack, is likened to an animal: she had the habit of baring her teeth and showing her claws when approached sexually.

22. According to Bakhtin, “at the time of folk legends the language of excrement was closely linked with fertility” (RW, 149).

23. In Diderot's La Religieuse, for example.

24. The French version of this poem is composed of 146 decasyllables (lines containing ten syllables), with varying rhyme configurations. The original contains no divisions into sections. This prose translation, therefore, introduces paragraph divisions which are not present in the French original. Furthermore, whereas tense fluctuations from past to present have been retained, punctuation has been altered in order to eliminate the original's run-on sentences.

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