Rabelais’s engins: War machines, analogy, and the anxiety of invention in the Quart Livre

This article explores the ways in which war machines are elaborated within Rabelais’s narrative, and how they align with – or challenge – the moralising discourse surrounding technology in the mid-sixteenth century. Through close reading of the Gaster and Andouilles episodes, it argues that the ambiguity of the term engin, which is used to refer both to inventive ingenuity and its physical products, provides a rich seam in Rabelais’s fourth book for the exploration of the boundary between nature and artifice. As such antitheses come under strain, so on the other hand do analogous pairings prove to reveal significant differences. Engins are caught up, in Rabelais’s text, in a complex web of associations that includes poetic and technological invention, political leadership, religious worship, and, repeatedly, food. As this web of themes is mapped, it becomes apparent that tripe, in particular, plays a prominent role in mediating a series of symbolic relationships. From the stomach-god whose actions are described by the refrain ‘Et tout pour la trippe’, to the army of tripe sausages who worship a flying pig, the traditional epic association of battle and banquet is recast by Rabelais’s own extraordinary engin.