Philip Berk discusses his study of Rabelaisian hermeneutics–the literary relationship between the author and his audiences–in Pantagruel, Rabelais’s sixteenth-century novel which satirizes French culture, religion, and learning.
Robert ter Horst and Patricia Sanchez comment on three noteworthy aspects of Hispanic literature between the Golden Age and the modern period: the twelfth-century Spanish epic poem El Cid; sixteenth-century picaresque fiction, which is integral to the origins of the modern novel; and Hispanic writing in contemporary literary theory and criticism.
At the time of these discussions, Berk, a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1984-85), was professor of French at the University of Rochester.
Sanchez was an independent scholar living in Durham, North Carolina. Ter Horst, a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1982-83), was professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Arizona.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
