Introduction The Sixteenth-Century World Upside Down (original) (raw)

To call something ‘inverted’ or ‘topsy-turvy’ in the sixteenth century is, above all, to label it as abnormal, unnatural and going against the natural order of things. The topos of the world upside down brings to mind a world returned to its initial state of primeval chaos, in which everything is inside-out, topsy-turvy and out of bounds: the cart is set before the horse, only fools can be wise, kings no longer rule, the belly is placed above the head, people behave like animals, and the elements are at war with each other. Widely used from Antiquity to the twenty-first century, the topos of the world upside down is extremely versatile and can be applied to a variety of situations. Linked to adynata or impossibilia, a rhetorical device which describes a natural impossibility, the world upside down can be used to describe a dystopian or utopian world, and to mock, deplore, criticise, or debase a person, a situation, or an institution. The world upside down can be found in poetry, novels, adages, pamphlets, paintings, and prints.

The power of the world upside down derives from the importance given to the social, natural, and cosmic hierarchies in the period. The scala naturæ or great chain of being can be defined as a strict hierarchical architecture structuring the visible and invisible worlds.1 Decreed by God, this chain of being begins with the divine, and goes downward to angels, demons, heavenly bodies, nobles, commoners, the animal kingdom, plants, and minerals. Linking back to classical natural philosophy, this order is described as immutable. Thus, any disruption of the great chain of beings, or any violation of the established social, natural, or cosmic order, threatens the balance of the whole world. It comes as no surprise that, in this context, the accusation of turning the world upside down is extremely popular in religious and political polemical writings.

The topos of the world upside down has often been associated with medieval and early modern popular culture. Based on inversion, this topos was a pervasive way of perceiving, ordering, and understanding the world in literature, visual arts, family relationships, politics as well as religious dogma and practices. The scholarship on this topic, from Bakhtin’s fundamental study Rabelais and his World to the conference proceedings Les Figures du monde renversé de la Renaissance aux Lumières, has placed much emphasis on its propensity to inspire social, political, religious, and scientific change.2 Viewing this topos as a way of promoting change – either by depicting an overturned social hierarchy as argued by Bakhtin, or by triggering a change of perspective as suggested in the 2010 conference – presupposes that literary and artistic representations of the world upside down have had a direct, quantifiable impact on society throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. On the contrary, I focus on the influence of historical context on the topos of the world upside down. To do so, I will examine the development of this topos throughout sixteenth-century France in relation to the religious wars. By analysing the use of the world upside down in significant works across sixteenth-century literature and visual culture, I argue that troubled times produce troubled texts.

I will examine three central approaches to defining the topos of the world upside down, which will inform my analyses: the rhetorical approach is typified by Céard, who asserts that the world upside down is based on two kinds of inversion: functional and transformative;3 the historical approach is closely associated with the work of Clark, who studies the place of inversion in Renaissance mentality;4 and the social approach, which can be traced back to the fundamental study of Carnival by Bakhtin.5 Then, I will identify and define the sources, boundaries, and main concepts that I will use in this study. I will also highlight classical and early modern influences for the sixteenth-century use of this topos: Lucan’s Civil War, the myth of the Gigantomachia, Carnival, and early modern comic theatre. These models will provide a useful background for understanding the development of the topos of the world upside down during the sixteenth-century. To conclude, I will provide an outline of this study.

Building on the fundamental definition of Curtius, who considers the topos of the world upside down as a development of the adynaton or impossibilia6 – a rhetorical figure akin to hyperbole describing something impossible – Céard defines the topos of the world upside down as a rhetorical device that ‘aide à construire l’image d’un pays de Cocagne, image renversée du monde réel, ou à représenter ce monde réel comme la figure renversée, l’antithèse, le négatif de ce qu’il devrait être.’7 Céard distinguishes two figures governing the topos of the world upside down: transformative inversion and functional inversion (détournement). In transformative inversion, something turns into its opposite (e.g. wise men into fools), while, in functional inversion, things are used for a purpose opposite or incongruous to their original function (e.g. liturgical objects used as kitchen utensils). Adding to Céard’s useful categorisation of the kinds of inversion at work in the topos of the world upside down, I will argue that absurd, foolish, or improper behaviours can also be described as inverted insofar as they overturn expectations by going against decorum and the proper or natural order of the world.

A broader and more historical perspective on the phenomenon of inversion is offered by Clark, who argues that ‘in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a predisposition to see things in terms of binary opposition was a distinctive aspect of a prevailing mentality.’8 The tendency to polarise, identified by Clark as a characteristic cognitive trait of the Renaissance, is closely related to ‘a linguistic preference for standardized forms of argument and expression based on antithesis, (polarisation) and a preoccupation with the extreme poles of the religious and moral universe.’9 Clark finds in early Greek natural philosophy and metaphysics the theoretical foundations for the Renaissance understanding of inversion. Building on Clark’s argument, this study will present the sixteenth-century topos of the world upside down as an example of the convergence of classical and medieval influences. More specifically, I will demonstrate that the medieval popular tradition, classical mythology, and historical literary accounts play an important role in the development of the topos of the world upside down in the sixteenth-century French literary and visual culture.

Another key perspective on the topos of the world upside down is offered by the work of Bakhtin, who opened up new avenues for Renaissance scholarship by examining the relationship between Carnival – a social institution – and grotesque realism – the corresponding literary mode. Bakhtin’s notion of ‘carnivalesque’ provides valuable insights into the socio-historical context of medieval and Renaissance uses of the world upside down.10 According to Bakhtin, the world upside down represents the destructive and regenerative powers of popular laughter as it overturns official institutions and the social order. With reference to the Feast of Fools, Bakhtin shows the prevalence of the body – especially the ‘material bodily lower stratum’, which designates a set of functions and characteristics associated with the lower body, such as digestion, defecation, and urination; as well as with drunkenness and debauchery – in Rabelais’s fiction. The world upside down is typified by a downward movement, which takes place through the redirection of everything that is elevated, sacred, and official into the lower realm of the material lower bodily stratum. Building on Bakhtin’s analysis of carnivalesque images in Rabelais, this study will show how transgressive and subversive carnivalesque motifs have been appropriated by religious and political polemics.

The world upside down has also been studied from the point of view of anthropology and folklore studies. While I may refer to folklore in chapters related to Carnival, these methodological approaches are better suited to study the celebrations and rituals based on inversion, rather than their literary or artistic representations. Since this study concentrates on the world upside down not as a set of cultural practices but as a topos that crystallised around these practices, I will use a combination of critical approaches based on literary and iconographical analysis. For instance, I will not treat Carnival as a festive occurrence but as a literary and artistic device used in woodcut prints, paintings, plays, and narratives. As a result, the medieval tradition, and its immediate continuation into the early modern period, in which inversion constitute a way of life more than a way of writing, will be mentioned when appropriate but not dealt with comprehensively.

The Renaissance world upside down has been the focus of two collective volumes, both of which illustrate that there are two problematic issues when dealing with this topic: one is the definition of the world upside down, the other is its scope.11 To avoid such problems, the boundaries of this study will be restricted, and the relevant definitions will be provided below.

My corpus focuses on sixteenth-century French texts and visual images. The versatility and pervasiveness of the world upside down makes it particularly suitable to study the complex relationship between texts and visual images during this period.12 Of particular interest is the mechanisms of transmission of a theme from one medium to another. Proverbs and adages, for instance, have been adapted into paintings, emblems, and narrative episodes. The overturned cooking pot trope has been used by both Catholic and Protestant polemicists in a wide variety of forms such as songs, plays, libelles and placards. Instances of the world upside down can be found beyond the printed page in visual and material early modern culture, such as manuscripts, entrées royales or architectural elements to list but a few examples. Without claiming to be exhaustive (either in terms of source material or potential methodological approaches), my objectives with this study consist in highlighting the process whereby the world upside down crystallised around certain themes during the sixteenth century, and in underlining the role played in this process by printed texts and images, especially in a polemical context.

Setting such boundaries will enable me to show the transformations undergone by the world upside down in France between late medieval examples based on Carnival and the late sixteenth-century religious and political polemics. I will argue that these changes can be explained by classical influences and by the increasingly troubled socio-political context.13 The medieval instances of the world upside down and their early modern continuations as well as the fortunes of this theme after the religious wars may be referred to when relevant but are ultimately beyond the scope of this study.

Since my objective consists in connecting literature and visual culture with their historical context, I will concentrate my enquiry on texts and images in which the use of inversion offers insights into specific social, political, religious, or historical issues of their time, particularly those of the religious wars. Other themes in which inversion plays an important role, such as travel narratives, gender norms reversals, or witchcraft, will be alluded to as far as they provide additional context. Since they have already received significant critical attention, these themes will not be at the centre of this study.14

Given the pervasiveness of the world upside down, I will restrict my study to emblematic examples. I will, additionally, refer to other kinds of inversion – such as inversion of words within phrases or letters within words – where these provide additional insight into the phenomena discussed here, while recognising that other kinds of inversion and their development deserve separate treatment.

Because of the multifaceted nature of the world upside down, differentiating it from neighbouring concepts can prove difficult. Rhetorical figures such as hysteron-proteron, adynaton/impossibilia, oxymoron, paradox and antithesis can be associated with the world upside down.15 Similarly, genres such as parody and satire and registers such as the burlesque and the grotesque, often overlap with the world upside down.16 To clarify, even though it can make use of various rhetorical strategies and exist in a variety of genres, it is useful to consider that the world upside down presupposes a relationship of inversion between an established system of binary oppositions. The nature of these binary oppositions determines, to a certain extent, the kind of strategies and the genre at play in the topos. For instance, inversions based on the dichotomy between normal and abnormal bodies are likely to point towards the grotesque, while cosmic inversions are probably based on the use of adynaton. A more complex case, the inversion between style and content in literary works may pertain to paradox, burlesque, or parody.

The central feature of the world upside down consists in the use of ‘inversion’, a concept which also calls for further clarification, as the nuances (or lack thereof) comprised by the sixteenth-century French notion of inversion may be challenging to twenty-first-century, English-speaking readership. I will begin by examining phrases directly related to the world upside down, before considering broader expressions denoting inversion. Designated in Latin as mundus inversus, the world upside down is known in French under various denominations: monde à l’envers, monde renversé, monde à rebours and monde bestourné. As a Europe-wide phenomenon, it is also called: die verkehrte or widerwertige Welt, de verkeerde Wereld, il mondo alla rovescia and el mundo al revés. It is useful to note that these phrases do not discriminate, from an etymological perspective, between the Latin roots inversus and reversus and do not seem related to the Latin praepostere (FEW, s. v. ‘inversus’; ‘reversus’; ‘praepostere.’). As a result, Middle French phrases pertaining to inversion – bestourner, renverser, mettre sans/sens dessus dessous, etc. – convey the idea of turning upside down, inside-out, back to front; going in the wrong order; throwing into a state of disorder or upheaval; debasing, subverting, or making something worse (DMF, s. v. ‘bestourner’; ‘renverser’; ‘envers’). The distinction between upsetting the vertical hierarchy of the world or its horizontal organisation – that is to say between the English ‘inversion’ and ‘reversal’17 – does not seem significant in the context of sixteenth-century French. Finally, it is crucial to differentiate between inversion and concepts such as reversibility, contrariety, and opposition. Reversibility, which indicates the potential for being overturned, is a crucial condition of the world upside down. In this respect, the reversibility of the world is an important factor for the development of the topos. Contrariety and opposition, which refer to a diametrical difference between two things, are also fundamental: inversion, which depends on reversibility, mostly happens if things are opposite to each other.

The importance of hierarchical thinking in the period adds a layer of complication to the sixteenth-century view of inversion. However, inversion characterises a dual, contrary relationship between two objects, even though these objects exist in a larger continuum such as the great chain of beings. The topos of the world upside down often highlights transgressions or anomalies by comparing them with the proper order of the world. In doing so, it swaps elements within the chain of beings but without reference to the other elements. For instance, a man succumbing to his lower, materialist impulses can be described as a beast, such as the satyr in many emblems or the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar.18 In such examples, angels, demons, plants, and minerals do not play any role, even though they are part of the same hierarchical structure. To this extent, I consider the binary framework as a subset of the hierarchical worldview. In my analyses, the emphasis on binary or hierarchical structure will depend, therefore, on the context.

Critics have suggested various classical and medieval models for the Renaissance world upside down. Curtius and Céard point out the importance of the figure of the adynaton. Clark proposes that the sixteenth century is characterised by ‘a heightened appreciation of what was involved when the orthodox world was reversed or inverted’ and attributes this feature to the emphasis on opposition and the harmony of contraries (concordia discors) in early Greek religion and natural philosophy as well as Christian metaphysics.19 Finally, Bakhtin convincingly highlights the influence of the Roman Saturnalia and the medieval Carnival and Feast of Fools over Rabelais’s depiction of the world upside down. My contribution will consist in proposing two additional and complementary models for the sixteenth-century world upside down. The classical models I will mention have had a crucial influence on epic poetry and emblem books, with the notable exception of Rabelais, who mixes classical and medieval source materials. I will also refer to early modern examples of the world upside down insofar as they provided an important source of inspiration for Renaissance authors, especially for emblematists and for Rabelais.

The first set of influences I will examine consists of classical sources: Lucan’s Civil War and the myth of the Gigantomachia. The Civil War is an epic poem recounting the Great Roman Civil War (49–45 BC) between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate supported by Pompey the Great. The poem takes its title from the battle of Pharsalus in Thessaly, which is considered as a turning point in the civil war. In the Civil War, available from 1469 and published in Lyon in 1519 and 1523, Lucan makes abundant use of the topos of the world upside down to convey the horrors of the civil war and the fact that Romans fighting Romans is against nature. Examples of inversion and disorder include cataclysmic storms, the overturning of all family relationships and witches bringing the dead back to life. As Tutu puts it: ‘The unchecked impiety of the civil war waged between Pompey and Caesar causes a dissolution of the entire cosmos.’20 In his study of the influence of Lucan over French civil war writers, Bailbé considers the Civil War as ‘un modèle épique’ for Du Bartas and D’Aubigné, mentioning briefly ‘le renversement des lois morales qui accompagne la guerre civile.’21 Building on Bailbé’s study, I will argue that Lucan’s Civil War provides a potential model for representing the French religious civil wars in terms of the world upside down.22

Another influential model is the Gigantomachia, the struggle between the Gigantes and the Gods for control over the cosmos. Frequently depicted in Greek art and tackled by several mythographers,23 the Gigantomachia describes the _Gigantes_’ attempt to bring down heaven. Born when the blood of Uranus fertilised Gaia, the Gigantes are monstrous, often represented with many hands and with snakes instead of feet. Renaissance writers referring to the Gigantomachia or the Gigantes include: Rabelais, Ronsard, Du Bartas and D’Aubigné.24 While Rabelais provides a parodic depiction of the Gigantes as the Andouilles, the sausage-people, Ronsard, Du Bartas and D’Aubigné use this myth to convey the idea of a foolish and nefarious rebellion against the natural order of the world. Medieval and Renaissance interpretations of the Gigantomachia consist in multiple layers: from a Christian perspective, Gigantes are associated with pride and can be related to the Tower of Babel or the fallen angels; they can also embody the battle between the carnal and the spiritual or between folly and wisdom. As such, the Gigantomachia contains the necessary elements to be an image not only of disorder and rebellion but also of the world upside down.

Following Bakhtin’s study of Rabelais, the world upside down is frequently studied from a medieval and carnivalesque perspective.25 Carnivalesque rituals and festivities are a particularly apt framework to describe inversion of the social hierarchy, so much so that carnivalesque is used as a synonym for inverted or topsy-turvy without direct reference to Carnival. I will suggest two early modern models for the world upside down to build on Bakhtin’s framework. First, I will focus on representative examples of images or vignettes revolving around the world upside down in order to show some of the stock images available to emblematists and authors of the time. Secondly, I will investigate inversion as a dramatic principle in late medieval and Renaissance farces.

The rich iconography based on the world upside down demonstrates that the sixteenth century was a pivotal moment in the development of the topos: while topsy-turvy imagery was not uncommon during the Middle Ages, the earliest examples of a collection of vignettes named after the world upside down date from the sixteenth century.26 Such prints are not an early modern specificity but crystallise during the seventeenth century and lose their evocative power during the French Revolution. The earliest examples of this Europe-wide tradition seem to be a series of sixteenth-century woodcut prints (Fig. 1–3). They probably stem from the iconographic tradition of painting or engraving proverbs and from medieval illustrations of folly, such as Bruegel’s Netherlandish Proverbs or the illustrated version of Brant’s Ship of Fools.27 The prints represent various scenes of inversion, often in the form of vignettes. A large number of the scenes revolve around inversion between human beings and animals: the horseman carries the horse, the ox kills the butcher, and animals command men, for instance. Other vignettes focus on inversion of gender roles (women go to war while men stay at home), natural impossibilities (fish and pigs fly, hens chase foxes) and cosmic inversions (upside down towns in the clouds). Presented as such, these images are double-edged and can be used to entertain people with absurd illustrations, to scare them by showing the folly of the world, or to undermine the social and political order. What I will demonstrate throughout this study is that sixteenth-century authors will make abundant use of these versatile, ambiguous, and powerful images and that the world upside down will be increasingly associated with socio-political troubles.

The social dimension of inversion is also a prominent feature of late medieval comic theatre: typically, in farces, the character guilty of having transgressed social norm in pursuit of personal ends (mostly sexual or financial) is punished and the social order is restored at the end of the play. Sotties are characterised by the presence of a wise or beneficial fool, or sot, who points out instances of folly in the world around him. Social historians and folklorists have insisted on the importance of theatrical performances in the development of Carnival.28 Performed by the members of the festive societies, these performances belonged to a variety of neighbouring genres, including secular ones such as farce and sottie, and religious ones such as mystère, sermon joyeux and morality play. Along with other spectacles, such as the fight between Lent and Carnival, the trial and execution of Carnival and various parodic processions, carnivalesque theatre constitutes one of the most widespread forms of entertainment during the Carnival period.

Gringore’s Le Jeu du Prince des Sotz et Mere Sotte provides an emblematic example of late medieval comic theatre.29 Including a ‘cry’, a ‘sottie’ and a ‘moralité’, Le Jeu du Prince des Sotz is set in a world ruled by folly, in which each character illustrates a different kind of folly. Central to the play is the confrontation between the Prince des Sotz and the Mere Sotte disguised as the Church. Le Jeu du Prince des Sotz can therefore be considered as a political and social satire in the service of the French royal authorities.30 According to Brown, ‘c’est l’alliance brillante entre le comique, la sottise, et la satire politique de l’abus du pouvoir et de la folie régnant partout dans le monde qui expliquent le grand succès de cette pièce.’31 Gringore’s polemical effort at the beginning of the sixteenth century prefigures the use of the topos of the world upside down in later polemical morality plays.32

This study undertakes a detailed examination of the influence of the troubled historical context on the world upside down by combining diachronic and synchronic evidence. In Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, I opt for a diachronic approach in order to demonstrate the development of the topos of the world upside down from comic and moralising device to polemical tool with reference to specific genres (adages, paradoxes, and emblems), and within Rabelais’s body of work. In Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, I study the polemical use of the topos of the world upside down during the wars of religion from a religious perspective (the overturned cooking pot trope), and from the perspective of social and cosmic upheaval (millenarianism and eschatological signs).

Chapter 1, ‘Adages, Paradoxes and Emblems’, shows how adages, paradoxes and emblems contribute to the dissemination of the topos of the world upside down throughout the sixteenth century. By examining representative examples, I demonstrate that the ‘polemicisation’ of adages and emblems pertaining to the world upside down follows the radicalisation of socio-political and religious tensions.

Chapter 2, ‘Rabelais’s World Upside down’, considers the development of Rabelais’s use of the topos of the world upside down from Pantagruel to the Cinquième Livre. Through the themes of Carnival, the grotesque body, and wisdom and folly, I show that Rabelais adopts an increasingly polemical stance, thus mirroring the historical context.

Chapter 3, ‘Religious Polemic’, demonstrates the critical importance of the topos of the world upside down for the polemic of the French religious wars. I focus on the trope of the overturning of the papal cooking pot in the Huguenot polemic, and its appropriation by Catholic polemicists.

Chapter 4, ‘Social and Cosmic Disorders’, investigates the influence of millenarian views on depictions of socio-political upheaval. I observe that the topos of the world upside down is central to descriptions of eschatological signs and offers a widespread metaphor for the disorders of the religious wars.