Rablais`s Gargantua and Pantagruel contains a variety of physical, especially sexual images; its protesque narrative style and various linguistic idiosyncracies including all kinds of languages, make up the carnivalistic writing. And through these features, Rablais makes revealed the hidden aspects of religiously biased world view of the Middle Ages and renders them comic and laughable. This is why Rablais is considered as a humanist. Not only does he criticize the Middle Ages in his book but praise the material aspects and the fruitfulness of human life, as well. To put it another way, he makes it a point that the God-centered world is gone and the new world of secular values has come. In Joyce`s Ulysses is also found those similar images and style of Rablais. This means that Joyce`s world is also based on the possibilities of openness and change, and that his aesthetic attitude is toward the secular and the humane rather than the authoritative, monologic form of system. Thus the comparative study on Rablais and Joyce helps to re-cognize their main aesthetic view of humanism, especially Joyce`s secular humanism. |