to some he beat out their brains, to others he crushed their arms, battered their legs, and bethwacked their sides till their ribs cracked with it. To others again he unjointed the spondyles or knuckles of the neck, disfigured their chaps, gashed their faces, made their cheeks hang flapping on their chin, and so swinged and balammed them that they fell down before him like hay before a mower. To some others he spoiled the frame of their kidneys, marred their backs, broke their thigh-bones, pashed in their noses, poached out their eyes, cleft their mandibles, tore their jaws, dung in their teeth into their throat, shook asunder their omoplates or shoulder-blades, sphacelated their shins, mortified their shanks, inflamed their ankles, heaved off of the hinges their ishies, their sciatica or hip-gout, dislocated the joints of their knees, squattered into pieces the boughts or pestles of their thighs, and so thumped, mauled and belaboured them everywhere, that never was corn so thick and threefold threshed upon by ploughmen’s flails as were the pitifully disjointed members of their mangled bodies under the merciless baton of the cross.
Rabelias's highly descriptive depiction of what the monk is doing to their bodies showcases his background in medicine and his knowledge of anatomy. In this instance, he uses his anatomical knowledge to enhance the scene and to bring a comedic absurdity to the situation. Williams explains that Rabelias uses his medical background to make jokes from mutilation, sickness, and horrific deaths. Williams states, "The learned language of the anatomist allows Rabelais to use dissection as a type of palliative for the reader. The focus on the minutiae of the body's internal structures, which these piece-by-piece itineraries create, deflects attention away from a view of the body as a coherent whole and thus leads to the victims being seen as something less than the sum of their constituent parts (673). This brings readers away from the horrors of what is actually happening and allows them to laugh at the absurdity of the dismemberments. This could have only been achieved by someone who knew extensively about the human body. Rabelais's prior experience as a doctor shaped the way he wrote comedy and allowed him to find humor in the most disgusting and horrific things.
Williams, Alison. “Sick Humour, Healthy Laughter: The Use of Medicine in Rabelais’s Jokes.” The Modern Language Review, vol. 101, no. 3, 2006, pp. 671–81. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/20466901. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.