Scatology and the gross body in literature-Rabelais and the Augustan age

O, what lovely faecal matter

-Francois Rabelais[i]

Faeces and gross bodily functions have been used as a trope since Aristophanes
and perhaps even earlier. It has undergone a variety of uses, with the body and its
functions once having been symbols of regeneration of an organic society, in the works
of Francois Rabelais during the Renaissance, to being reduced to devices of vulgarity in
Augustan satire. These two eras, connected by a deep interest in the classics, differ
greatly in their use of the body as a literary trope, for a variety of reasons which I shall
attempt to discuss in this paper of mine.
Rabelais’s work, ‘Gargantua and Pantagruel’, is unique in its use of the
carnivalesque and of grotesque realism. This implies a fusion of the institution of the
carnival and the grotesque nature of the body. The body in Rabelais’s work becomes an
emblem of an organic society which continually engages in the process of regeneration
and renewal. The carnival as a social institution in the middle ages, signified a time of the
year when the cycle of birth and death in nature would be complete. This would coincide
with the season of the harvest or the season of the vendange (grape-picking and wine-
making). The carnival was marked by revelry and plenitude during which the society as
an organic body comprising individual biological units underwent a ritual of
regeneration. The individual bodies were however, not closed systems. They ingest and
excrete substances and these actions form the body’s contact with the universe. The
apertures of the body thus assume great significance as they are the sites of the body’s
interaction between the body and the outer world. Human excreta is thus, not filthy but is
as important as food itself, in the greater scheme of things. This is owing to its status as
an equal participant in the cycle of the processes in nature that leads to a regeneration of
life. Scatological references in ‘Gargantua and Pantagruel’ are not meant to evoke
disgust, neither are they tools used to lampoon characters, fictional or real. Gargantua’s
discovery of a goose’s utility as an ass-wipe indicates the end of an important phase of
his life. Excretion thus signifies change and the possibility of the arrival of the new. The
function of excreta as manure is intrinsically linked to such a celebratory view of it.
Owing to a profusion of references to the excretory functions of the body,
Rabelais’s work has been beset with charges of vulgarity, which are however, not
grounded in the aesthetics of the humanist discourse of Rabelais. Mikhail Bakhtin’s work
on Rabelais, ‘Rabelais and His World’, radically alters the previously held views on
Rabelais. Bakhtin places Rabelais in the humanist setting from which his work arose and
traces its roots to an agricultural society where the carnival was a social institution of
great political importance. The carnival, an upsetting of the order of that existed during
normal times, Bakhtin says, is a potent tool of subversion of authority, when the king
plays the clown, and vice-versa. The promise of an alternative social order that the
carnival throws up, even if for a short interregnum, opens up subversive possibilities. The
trope of the carnivalesque thus does not speak of the body and its excrement in negative
terms.[ii] It adopts a form which allows a free discussion of the excretory functions of the
body, that is, grotesque realism.
 The seemingly vulgar in Gargantua and Pantagruel are examples of how
Rabelais uses grotesque realism as a literary mode. It is a device which enables the reader
to see his own image, albeit in an oblique manner. Rabelais makes his reader conscious
of his own self and the functions associated with such a notion of selfhood, excretion
being one such function. The trope of the carnival assists in placing the reader and the
author within the confines of a society where the significance of the body lay not so much
in it being the body of a single individual with a unique identity but in being part of a
larger society. Dung in Rabelais’s society served the similar function of extending the
notion of selfhood and identity to an entire society rather than to a single person. As Jean
Claude Margolin would say,
Dame Folly and the gigantic, ludicrous, but so human beings of Gargantua and
Pantagruel act as reflective and distorting mirrors for their literary fathers and for
the reader’s self-consciousness….. Folly is ironic self-consciousness and the most
effective tool for the discovery of our self by ourselves.[iii]
The vulgar body emerges during the Augustan age. Bodies in the writings of
the Augustan age are referred to as individual units, where the functions of the body
appear in a different light. This is partially a consequence of the shift of mainstream
literature towards the city, which had started to emerge as a space of much commercial
activity. Scatological references often became a means of exposing the unclean
underbelly of a city where sanitary conditions were absent. With a spurt in commercial
activities, the city became more populous. The seeds of a commercial, market-oriented
print culture had already been sown by then, which writers like Jonathan Swift were
extremely contemptuous of. In ‘A Tale of a Tub’, he is vicious when he attacks the
‘Grubstreet hacks’, which was a term used to refer to a struggling writer who occupied
tiny rooms in unhygienic locations of the city.
The best Part of his Diet, is the Reversion of his own Ordure, which exspiring into
Steams, whirls perpetually about, and at last reinfunds. His Complexion is of a
dirty Yellow, with a thin scattered beard, exactly agreeable to his Dyet upon its
first Declination; like other Insects, who having their Birth and Education in an
Excrement, from thence borrow their Colour and their Smell. The student of this
Apartment is very sparing of his Words, but somewhat over-liberal of his Breath;
He holds his hand out ready to receive your Penny, and immediately upon
Receipt, withdraws to his former Occupations.[iv]
Scatology in the description of this writer is deployed so as to ridicule the Grubstreet
hack who offends Swift’s pro-aristocratic sensibilities. After James Harrington had
brought out his book on the Cromwellian regime, The Commonwealth of Oceana[v],
which proposed a radical change in the laws regarding the management of land, the threat
to aristocracy was widely perceived to be a real one. The Grubstreet hack represented a
move towards a commercial writer who would write for money, coming from a reading
public rather than from an aristocratic patron (a move which was still not complete but
would be by the time Samuel Johnson appeared on the scene).Swift is critical of such
writers and his satire against them is laced with scatological images that are meant to
point to their lower class belonging. References to the body thus become a means of
attacking a person’s economic position during the Augustan age, when faeces and dirt
become synonymous.
 Scatology in Swift, thus, anticipates the modern city of which squalor is an
indispensable part. The Augustan City thus becomes a prototype of the modern city that
is divided neatly into sanitary and insanitary parts. The social sections that lived in these
parts were sharply divided on the basis of their class-positions, as they are, even today.
Swift is against such a shift because of the shift of the importance of land to money that
the emergence of a city entailed. The emergence of money in its modern form was
something that deeply affected the Augustan age since it upset the traditional aristocratic
order. The emergent bourgeois thrived on this shift towards money, since it provided
them with social mobility. Social mobility and a decadent aristocracy however, brought
with it conventions of taste and judgement. Another important development was the
arrival of bourgeois individualism which greatly eroded the organic nature of the society
from which excrement derived much of its significance as a symbol of regeneration.
Swift’s scatological remarks against such an emergent class are made against their lack of
taste and wit. Swift associates this commercialization with dung and thus, tries to impose
on them the stamp of low birth.
Reason as a faculty was given prime importance in the Augustan age. This age
was known for its achievements in the sciences (what we call the sciences today). The
excretory functions of the body began to be studied purely from the point of view of
biology and medicine. Thus, Thomas Hobbes would say,
An anatomist or a physician may speak or write his judgement of unclean things
because it is not to please but to profit; but for another man to write his
extravagant and pleasant fancies of the same is as if a man, from being tumbled
into dirt, should come and present himself before good company.[vi]
The important part of this statement, at least from the point of view of this paper, is the
neat categorization that Hobbes effects, thus banning “dirt” from literature that is to be
read by a “good company”. The affiliations of dirt with the lower classes of the Augustan
age, is thus apparent. However, according to critics like Jeff Persels and Russel Ganim,
dirt comes to be deprived of its function as a marker of class, in later times since the
masses too, adopt the attitudes of the upper classes towards dung.[vii]
It is also interesting to note that Hobbes speaks the language of the emergent
bourgeois classes. References to scatology should be made, according to Hobbes, only
for “profit”. Hobbes’s use of the language of commerce, to demarcate between the
profitable and the non-profitable, is an indication of the demarcation between the
sciences (profitable) and the arts (“to please”) which was to become complete in the
times to come. The rise of individualism which was a direct consequence of social
mobility resulted in such a notion of the humanities. Consequently, any reference to the
scatological functions of the body in decent literature was to be avoided henceforth.
References to excremental functions of the body also become a means of
attacking an opposing view in politics or literature. Dryden uses scatological
imagery-“rising fogs”, “a tympany”, “a subterranean wind”[viii], and so on and so forth,
to ridicule his literary and political rival, Thomas Shadwell in ‘MacFlecknoe’. By
juxtaposing shit and Shadwell, Dryden aims to evoke disgust and to trash any claims to
literary merit that Shadwell may have made. Such satires aimed at rival playwrights were
common in the Augustan age. They reveal an attitude to excrement that is diametrically
opposite to that which we find in ‘Gargantua and Pantagruel’. We find a displacement of
excrement from its position of symbolic significance that it enjoyed earlier. Erasmus
points out how Saturn, in ancient festivals was given the nickname, ’Sterculeus’, which
had close associations with dung.[ix] Dryden’s use of scatological images points to the
deeply entrenched attitudes of disgust that were engendred as part of a civilizing process.
Framing the jest scatologically points at a discomfort with the excretory
functions of the body. Why the discomfort though? Norman O. Brown attempts to answer
this question in his essay on “The Excremental Vision” of Swift. He explains the
discomfort as a horrified realization of the relation between the higher and the lower
functions of the body. He talks of the Freudian theory according to which anal erotism is
repressed as a consequence of a change in man’s posture, during the course of evolution.
This is accompanied by a division in the smells associated with the higher and lower
strata of the body and thus, a division is effected. This is part of a civilizing process,
which occurs by means of sublimation, says Brown.[x] The Yahoos, in ‘Gulliver’s
Travels’, follow rites in which excrement holds great significance. The following passage
is an account of how a favourite of a leader, when he leaves his office, is treated.
...the very Moment he is discarded, his Successor, at the Head of all the Yahoos in
that District, Young and Old, Male and Female, come in a Body, and discharge
their Excrements upon him from Head to Foot.[xi]
The society of the Yahoos could thus be a vulgar and distorted representation of the
medieval carnival. The rituals of regeneration that were followed in such a society
accorded great symbolic significance to dung. The Yahoo is different from the European
man in as much as he/she has not been subjected to a repressive civilizational process.
Swift does not, however, endorse either condition, neither that of the Yahoos, nor that of
the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver’s refusal to socialize with human beings, once he returns, is
seen not as a likely arrogance resulting from association with higher beings on his part
but as a perversity resulting from pride. Recognizing the inhumanity of the Houyhnhnms,
Swift does not recommend for humanity to attain the zenith of the civilization of Reason,
which they represent and shows a distinct preference for Pedro de Mendez who
represents a type, that of “a very courteous and gentle person”.[xii] Even though Swift’s
attitudes towards excrement are unconsciously Augustan, he stops short of aligning
himself with the civilizing process that sought to distance the European imagination from
the excretory functions of the body.
What Swift seems to be doing, however, is to project his horror of realization
onto another section of humanity, namely, women, says Susan Gubar. She says
Swift does not dismiss Western civilization as mere sublimation, nor does he
bless the body as part of god’s creation. Instead, in these and other poems, Swift
describes his own inability to accept the ambiguities and contradictions of the
human condition, portraying his failure in the figure of the repulsive female.[xiii]
Gubar brushes aside the arguments of Brown, terming them attempts to salvage the
respectability of Swift, an important part of the male-dominated literary canon. By doing
this, Gubar, however, ends up ignoring the very process of sublimation that forces Swift
to make a choice, who, like his fictional creation, chooses to demonize women, rather
than accept filth as a part of the human situation.
One of the most significant reasons for the denigration of faeces was the
dismantling of the organic structure of the society. Critics like Franco Moretti have talked
about this crumbling organicity that gets reflected in the absence of tragedy in the post-
Jacobean age.[xiv]Whereas the Middle Ages would value dung as a product of its own
civilization and accord it symbolic value, later ages would accompany a move away from
organicity with a lowering of the value of those very aspects of life that the middle ages
cherished, such as laughter, dung and the carnival. The carnival that we see in the plays
of the Restoration is unrecognizable from its medieval counterpart. Theories about
laughter too, centred on the Hobbesian definition of it, which was none too flattering, as
opposed to the “boom of laughter”[xv] that characterized the middle ages.
Scatology in literature in the Augustan age is relegated to the sidelines, and is
finally buried during the prudish Victorian era. Unlike the other function of the lower
strata of body, sexuality, it remains to be legitimized as a field of study.

[i] < http://www.google.co.in>

<http://books.google.co.in/books?id=0GKUQ-
5o3qkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=fecal+matters+in+early+modern+art&source=bl&ots=sqef25Jq-
n&sig=V8h84g4iflLA6YfLfGga1kAW5xM&hl=en&ei=kAPNTLj_H8qeceSD1aMO&sa=X&oi=book_r
esult&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false>

[ii] < http://www.google.co.in>

<http://books.google.co.in/books?
id=SkswFyhqRIMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=rabelais+and+his+world&source=bl&ots=wdBxCCiO
5z&sig=K4SIx5YAqe67D8barLDvFTtWUPs&hl=en&ei=oPrMTMPdGoj0ccuDtZII&sa=X&oi=book_
result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false>

[iii] Margolin, Jean-Claude; Rabelais, Erasmus’s Intellectual Heir? Francois Rabelais-Critical

Assessments, Ed. Carron, Jean-Claude. The John Hopkins University Press,1995

[iv] Pg 355, Swift, Jonathan; A Tale of a Tub, Ed. Greenberg, Robert A. and Piper, William.
Norton Critical Edition, 1973

[v]< http://en.wikipedia.org>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Commonwealth_of_Oceana>

[vi] Hobbes, Thomas; On Human Nature, from Restoration and Eighteenth Century Comedy, Ed.
Scott McMillin, Norton Critical Edition, 1997
[vii] < http://www.google.co.in>

<http://books.google.co.in/books?id=0GKUQ-
5o3qkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=fecal+matters+in+early+modern+art&source=bl&ots=sqef25Jq-
n&sig=V8h84g4iflLA6YfLfGga1kAW5xM&hl=en&ei=kAPNTLj_H8qeceSD1aMO&sa=X&oi=book_r
esult&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false>

[viii] Dryden, John; MacFlecknoe, Ed. Madhu Grover. Worldview Critical Editions, 2004

[ix] < http://www.google.co.in>

<http://books.google.co.in/books?id=0GKUQ-
5o3qkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=fecal+matters+in+early+modern+art&source=bl&ots=sqef25Jq-
n&sig=V8h84g4iflLA6YfLfGga1kAW5xM&hl=en&ei=kAPNTLj_H8qeceSD1aMO&sa=X&oi=book_r
esult&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false>

[x] Pg 616, Brown, Norman O.; The Excremental Vision, A Tale of a Tub, Ed. Greenberg, Robert
A. and Piper, William. Norton Critical Edition, 1973

[xi] Pg 228, ibid

[xii]Pg 251, ibid

[xiii] <http://www.jstor.org/>

<http://www.jstor.org/pss/3173290?searchUrl=/action/doBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dthe
%2Bfemale%2Bmonster%2Bin%2Baugustan%2Bsatire%26wc%3Don%26acc%3Doff>

[xiv] Moretti, Franco; Signs Taken for Wonders. Verso, 2005

Xv < http://www.google.co.in>
<http://books.google.co.in/books?
id=SkswFyhqRIMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=rabelais+and+his+world&source=bl&ots=wdBxCCiO
5z&sig=K4SIx5YAqe67D8barLDvFTtWUPs&hl=en&ei=oPrMTMPdGoj0ccuDtZII&sa=X&oi=book_
result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false>

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Romy Rajan

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