Rabelais and P. G.

Wodehouse: Two Comic Worlds

Author(s): Barbara C. Bowen
Source: L'Esprit Créateur, Vol. 16, No. 4, THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE MIND: Studies
presented to W. G. Moore (Winter 1976), pp. 63-77
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/26280544
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 Rabelais and P. G. Wodehouse:
Two Comic Worlds*

Barbara C. Bowen

HIS LOOKS AT FIRST SIGHT like an eccentric, perhaps even

ü a pointless, comparison. Clearly Rabelais and Wodehouse are
worlds apart, in many ways. For instance, Rabelais is primarily
an intellectual and Wodehouse often aggressively anti-intellectual ; Ra
belais is deeply committed to the reform of religious, political and social
institutions, while Wodehouse remains serenely aloof from society's
problems; Wodehouse's novels are based on plot and its ramifications,
while Rabelais' are based on ideas ; Rabelais delights in unbuttoned
comedy, while Wodehouse's is always decorous ; nearly all Wodehouse
novels are built around a romantic love story, while Rabelais is pre
sumably not interested in romantic love, since he never mentions it.
But equally obvious, both are great humorists, whose comic worlds are
poised on the indefinable dividing-line between reality and fantasy, and
it is not really surprising that they have techniques in common. Sir
Pelham was kind enough to inform me, in a private letter, that he had
no very clear recollection of Rabelais, and that he thought their "stuff"
was probably very unlike. I mention this because the intention of this
article is not to claim influence of any kind by Rabelais on Wodehouse,
but simply to compare a few of their common comic techniques,
specifically in the domains of plot, characters, intellectual gamesman
ship and use of language. I am not claiming either that no other comic
writers use these techniques, but that they show us an astonishing, and
instructive, similarity of literary method between a Renaissance Evan
gelical humanist and a twentieth-century English gentleman.
Plot and action. First let us look at the plots and general structure
of both, again bearing in mind the obvious differences. Rabelais wrote
four books, or five, if you accept the Cinquiesme Livre as authentic;

The research for this article was greatly facilitated by a John Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1974-5, although this is not the
project for which the Fellowship was awarded.

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 L'Esprit Créateur

Wodehouse wrote 96.1 There are few fundamental plot similari

though both repeat their plots: Rabelais writes essentially the s
story in Pantagruel and Gargantua, with the epic divisions of childh
I education / maturity through war, and similar characters surroun
the hero. Wodehouse frequently repeats plots: Bertie-blackmailed-i
stealing-objet-d'art, for instance, or Will-Lord-Emsworth-defy-sister
unite-young-lovers ?
More importantly, both humorists' stories are at the same ti
authentic and parodie, and both derive from the epic. Rabelais wri
an epic which is also a pastiche of the epic, like Folengo before
so that we can simultaneously care about characters and apprec
their effectiveness as satiric weapons. In the storm scene of the Q
Livre (18-24),2 Panurge is a hilariously comic coward and the incar
tion of the faults which Stoic and Evangelical heroes must avoid. W
sympathise with Bingo Little's romance with Rosie M. Banks, at
same time as we enjoy the satire of the "bilge" Rosie writes.
Most of Wodehouse's plots, like Rabelais', are concerned with
"faicts héroïques," and the basic story line is hero-foils-villain, as it
should be in an epic. Wodehouse's heroes, who unlike Rabelais' are
usually foiling a villain in order to get a girl, are often presented as
chivalrous knight-errants, whether they are hiding girls in taxi-cabs,
stealing cow-creamers, painting statues in the middle of the night, or
setting houses on fire. (Bertie Wooster, as one of the very few Wode
house heroes who does not aspire to matrimony, is thereby closer to
the true epic hero.) Comic references to chivalry are frequent in Wode
house (" 'Just to think of it takes my appetite away', said Russell Clut
terbuck, cleaving his steak as Sir Galahad with his good sword clove
the casques of men"3), as in Rabelais; where Gymnaste has a sword
named Baise mon cul (QL 41), Uncle Fred has his great sponge
Joyeuse.4

1. The list in David A. Jasen's Bibliography and Readers Guide to the First
Editions of P. G. Wodehouse (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1971) stops
with A Pelican at Blandings. Since have appeared: The Girl in Blue (1970),
Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971), Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972),
Bachelors Anonymous (1973) and Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (1974).
2. References to Rabelais are to the two-volume Gamier edition, ed. Pierre
Jourda, Paris, 1962.
3. For reasons of space I shall not give both titles of Wodehouse books in the
many cases where the English and American are different; both can always
be found in Jasen. For obvious reasons I shall give chapter numbers, not
page numbers, for the novels.
4. Uncle Fred in the Springtime, ch. 10.

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 Bowen

As critics have pointed out, Wodehouse's young m

a feudal code of behavior, learned no doubt at their
(where many of them were football heroes), and even t
Ukridge never deliberately lets a girl down. There are d
not-done things : Bertie may slide down a water-pipe to
Agatha,5 but he may not tell a ghastly girl that he doe
engaged to her. Gargantua and Pantagruel may in frivolo
live bears or urinate on Parisians, but their relationship
and subjects is always taken seriously.
We are, in fact, in a world of fixed class structure
change — Panurge from privileged companion to despis
Bertie from vapid boulevardier to articulate philosop
relative place of each man in society does not change. L
may have to rent a house for his former butler,6 but th
each other remains exactly what it always was. And eac
his little list, as Gilbert would put it, of heroes and vil
villains are theologians, monks, doctors, lawyers and hyp
house's include poets, newspaper proprietors, policem
hunters, successful financiers, all small boys, and most
put it more simply, both hate oppression, hypocrisy and
in both villains are usually unhappy — a basically Sto
belais' heroes are Evangelical humanists, the downtrodd
Pantagruelistes" ; Wodehouse's are people who intrigu
of it, ugly but kind young men, attractive nice girls, m
most cats, and most members of the Drones Club. Bo
despise humanity in the mass but are capable of great s
individual members of it — as long as they do not try
their place. Rabelais scorns "le peuple de Paris," "tant so
et tant inepte de nature" (G 17), but his giants are cons
people like Triboullet or the peasant of Papefiguier
describes pejoratively any assemblage of the populace,7
gence such characters as policeman Garroway,8 Elsie
maid 9 and Lord Emsworth's cockney girl friend.10

5. "Jeeves and the Impending Doom," in Very Good, Jeeves.

6. Something Fishy.
7. Especially in Psmith, Journalist and Summer Moonshine. C
village concerts attended by Bertie and his friends.
8. The Small Bachelor.
9. Uncle Dynamite.
10. "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend," in Blandings Castle.

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 L'Esprit Créateur

Although, as already mentioned, these two humorists have

different attitudes to plot, there are certain resemblances worth n
In each case a basically hackneyed plot outline is adorned with
zaniest kind of inventiveness. Is Panurge's proposed method of bui
the walls of Paris (P 15) any more eccentric than the reasons a ri
young man-about-town and an eminent psychiatrist are roaming
merset in the middle of the night with, respectively, boot-polish
burnt cork all over their faces? 11 Panurge's pranks are of the sa
undergraduate-rag type as those of the members of the Drones C
Uncle Fred and Galahad.12 As Usborne says,13 many of Wodehous
characters, male and female, act like "a youngish and rather row
fifteen," and like Rabelais' they expend an extraordinary amou
effort for what seems like a trivial result. Perhaps Bobby Wickh
the best comparison to Panurge, since she creates havoc for the s
fun of it, while Galahad and Uncle Fred are normally working, ho
deviously, toward a practical end. But in both authors action is o
not 'real' action. Pantagruel may fight genuine enemies, but Panu
prefers to expend a flurry of energy on trying to decipher the
of a piece of paper which turns out to be blank (P 24), and the de
machinations of Bertie or Ukridge are often as pointless as Janot
Bragmardo's appeal for bells which have already been returned.
Both authors make use of stock situations familiar to their readers.
Rabelais' epic journey contains the regulation storm and fabulous
monster, and Wodehouse's love stories the traditional misunderstandings
and reconciliations. Both also enjoy turning a stock situation on its
head — what the Renaissance calls the world-upside-down topos. Ra
belais gives us an éloge des debteurs et emprunteurs {TL 3-5) and a
description of Gaster which parodies Ficino's of Love {QL 57). Wode
house's Corky Pirbright is not happy as an actress, having become one
only because her mother wanted her to, and secretly yearns to retire
to a quiet village14 ; and Jane Hubbard, the big-game huntress who
rolls her own cigarettes with one hand, dreams of a gentle clinging man

Thank You, Jeeves.

A recent article has shown that many Drones Club pranks, far from being
surrealist inventions, are based on the real life activities of the 'Pink Uns'
and 'Pelicans' : N. T. P. Murphy, "The Real Drones Club," Blackwood's
Magazine 318 (1975), 124-135.
Wodehouse at Work (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1961). In my opinion this
is the only good book to have appeared on Wodehouse, and it is excellent.
The Mating Season.

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 BOWEN

who would be dependent on her and mix her whisky and soda when
she came home.15

Both also like plots which turn on objects, to be defended, stolen

or otherwise manipulated. Rabelais thus uses books, bells, fouaces, an
abbey, a cuckold's horns, sheep, chitterlings and frozen words, where
Wodehouse prefers dogs, pictures, valuable books, jewelry, a cow
creamer and knock-out drops, to name a few.
The general atmosphere in both fictional worlds is also more similar
than might appear at first sight. Rabelais's characters love enormous
banquets and gallons of drink — but so do Wodehouse's. Think of
Bertie's loving descriptions of Anatole's cooking, Gussie's passion for
cold steak-and-kidney pie, Uncle Fred's recipe for the "May Queen,"
or the enormous meal consumed by Osbert Mulliner's two burglars.16
Wodehouse also has plenty of violence, though his comedy is much
less ferocious than Rabelais'. But his characters set fire to houses, push
each other into ponds or downstairs, fall off ladders, are chased with
pitchforks or shot with air-guns, imprisoned in Turkish baths, harried
by vicious dogs, bound and gagged, or marooned in the open during
a storm.

All critics are agreed that there is no sex and no obscenity

Wodehouse. Usborne quotes one passage which he claims is the o
indication in all his books that a nice girl can be physically aroused
There is another passage which should be quoted in this context
the second version of The Prince and Betty18 ch. 14: "The cont
of her soft flesh through the thin sleeve set loose in him a whirl o
primitive emotions. He longed to seize her in his arms, to be brutal,
hurt her." But undoubtedly sex is usually left to the intuition of t
reader. Obscenity, however, is quite often implied, though discreet
Hall informs us 19 that the recurring joke which runs roughly as f
lows: "if all the girls so-and-so has loved and lost were laid end
end, they would reach half-way down Piccadilly" is a laundered versi
of a popular joke of the 1920's: "If all the girls at a Princeton pr

The Girl on the Boat, ch. 4.

"The Ordeal of Osbert Mulliner," in Mr. Mulliner Speaking.
Usborne, p. 126, quoting Jill the Reckless, ch. 4: "The touch of his body
against hers always gave her a thrill, half pleasurable, half exciting."
Usborne is quoted with approval by Robert A. Hall, The Comic Style of
P. G. Wodehouse (London : Archon Books, 1974), p. 36.
See Jasen, pp. 39-41.
P. 51, n. 23.

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 L'Esprit Créateur

were laid end to end, it would be the Princeton men who would do
it." Similarly we can easily guess where the monkey put the nuts, and
that "go spit up a rope"20 is a euphemism for "go shit up a twisted
rope"; and if the story about the young man of Calcutta is the
celebrated limerick, it is certainly obscene.21 Euphemisms and peri
phrases, indeed, abound in both works, and Rabelais' synonyms for
the sexual act can be paralleled by Wodehouse's for "drunk": fried,
ossified, plastered and so on.22
The gusto of Wodehouse s world may be rendered in more "clas
sical" language, but is surely as vital and as infectiously enthusiastic as
Rabelais'. Another general similarity is in the relationship between fan
tasy and reality. In both cases, improbable, even surreal, events occur
in entirely realistic frameworks. The war with Picrochole is fought over
the countryside where Rabelais' family lived, and the minute descriptions
of Market Blandings and Valley Fields create the illusion that they are
real places. In both, time is similarly treated; though ostensibly linear,
it is elastic enough to allow of lengthy flash-backs and improbably
long pauses in the action. While the Andouilles are approaching in
battle array the companions conduct a lengthy discussion on language,
a conversation about cooks and the preparation of the Grande Truye
(QL 37-40); Psmith and Eve Halliday have time for a long argument
and explanation between Baxter's appearance a few yards away and
his arrival at their side.23
1 see a further similarity in each authors relationship with his
readers. Rabelais often addresses his directly, and Bertie seems to do
so even more than most first-person narrators. He worries about whether
his regular readers will be bored by recapitulation of events they are
already familiar with, and often asks rhetorical questions or appears
to confer with his reader. Rabelais is often called a conteur, but he

Favourite expletive of Howard Steptoe in Quick Service.

"Jeeves and the Greasy Bird," in Plum Pie. The limerick runs as follows:
There was a young man of Calcutta
Who tried to write "cunt" on a shutter,
He had got to CU
When a pious Hindou
Knocked him arse over tip in the gutter.
Geoffrey Jaggard, Wooster's World (London: Macdonald, 1967), lists the
following in the Jeeves novels alone : awash, blotto, boiled, fried, full to
the back teeth, lathered, lit, offcolour, oiled, ossified, pie-eyed, plastered,
polluted, primed, scrooched, sozzled, squiffy, stewed, stinko, tanked, tight,
under the sauce, whiffled and woozled.
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 10.

Winter 1976

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 Bowen

shares with Wodehouse the dramatic gift for staging

creating characters by means of their speech. And bo
readers as "customers" (Bertie's word) who have paid
and thereby acquired certain rights over it.

Characters. Rabelais' main characters are giants, and m

minor ones are grotesques. Wodehouse's protagonists are s
than life, although the techniques used to characterise t
different. Lord Uffenham, with his enormous pear-shap
eye-brows, huge feet and absent-mindedness, is typical;
have been singled out for enlargement, so that the effe
dimensional caricature, as with Panurge's cowardice a
Bragmardo's self-satisfaction.
Both humorists have a fondness for truly horrible ch
hesitate to compare the Sibylle de Panzoust to Lord Ems
Connie or to Bertie's Aunt Agatha (who is reputed to kill
teeth), but surely Roderick Spode, Stilton Cheesewrig
Bradbury invite comparison with Picrochole or Loup-Ga
single-minded determination to destroy the adversary. S
often appear to be eight feet tall in moments of stress,
ways behave like the ogres of folklore (sometimes they
to Apollyon straddling across the way). Still more revolti
perhaps, are those who are not physically enlarged, but
trait singled out for exaggeration is repulsive to start wi
Pilbeam's pimples or Honoria Glossop's laugh like "the Sc
going under a bridge."24
Among both lists of heroes I should perhaps have in
with inquiring minds." Many Wodehouse heroes, from P
Uffenham, have the attitude of Jimmy Pitt in A Gentlem
whose "impulse, when he met a man whose code of beha
the ordinary code, was to chat with him and to extract his p
(ch. 17). They thereby resemble Pantagruel, "amateur de
desyrant tous jours veoir et tous jours apprendre." Intelle
though directed to very different ends, is a characteristic of
There are closer resemblances in the interaction between
The Bertie/Jeeves relationship is not unlike the Pantagru
in reverse: Jeeves is the omniscient, condescending St
and Bertie the incorrigible optimistic fool. Panurge,

24. "The Hero's Reward," in The Inimitable Jeeves.

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 L'Esprit Créateur

critically compared to Hamlet as a problematic hero,25 is a good de

closer to Ukridge, who like him is totally irresponsible, especially a
money, always convinced that the solution to his problem is just ar
the corner, incapable of seeing himself as others see him, and alwa
straight-faced when everyone around him is laughing. And Gal
Threepwood and Uncle Fred are in many ways reminiscent of F
Jean: always ready to rush with indefatigable energy into what
fray is nearest, crushing the weaker-willed with scathing words, a
creating mayhem always with the purest possible motives.
AU Wodehouse people are "stock" characters in the sense that th
are created to fill a certain function in the plot. They all behave c
sistently in recurring circumstances ; when disaster strikes we kn
that Uncle Tom will curse the Government, Aunt Dahlia will turn
purple and throw things, police constables will say "Ho!," Jeeves will
allow one eyebrow to quiver, and Psmith and Jeff Miller will go on
talking, just as we know that Frère Jean will swear and exert himself
and Panurge will be terrified. Both authors assemble in one book an
astonishing diversity of characters who apparently belong in quite
different literary genres. This is not so striking in Rabelais, whose
characters appear successively in successive chapters, as in Wodehouse,
where the average country house party includes an absent-minded elderly
aristocrat, an obnoxious interfering middle-aged female, a forceful but
stupid business-man, a super-efficient secretary, a drooping heroine, a
knightly hero, two unscrupulous criminals and a pig. The juxtaposition
of the different languages spoken by all these characters is perhaps
funnier than the succession of such languages in Rabelais, although
parts of the Tiers Livre come close.

Intellectual parlor-games. The resemblance here is very intriguing,

for it implies more intellectual kinship than we should expect between
the Renaissance and the modern writer. We should remember that
Wodehouse received an English public-school education, based on the
Classics and including such obsolete exercises as writing Latin verse,
which was closer to Rabelais' education than we might imagine. In
particular, like Rabelais, he learned about literature from ancient authors
whose basic principle was not originality but imitatio — the imaginative
use of topoi.

25. Jean Paris, Hamlet et Panurge (Paris, Seuil, 1971).

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 B O WEN

What do I mean by 'intellectual parlor-games'? First of all, the

parody of literary traditions familiar to the reader. We have mentioned
some aspects of their pastiche of the epic, and there are many others.
They also make fun of courtly love conventions; Rabelais briefly, in
Panurge's conversation with the lady of Paris (P 21) and Wodehouse
at much more length, in the "bilge" written by Rosie M. Banks and
spoken by Madeline Bassett and Cora McGuffy Spottsworth ("Hark
to the wavelets, plashing on the shore. How they seem to fill one with
a sense of the inexpressibly ineffable"26). Wodehouse is often pastiching
recent authors and literary trends unfamiliar to today's reader,27 just
as Rabelais is full of echoes of Folengo, Erasmus and Castiglione.
Such parodies are intellectual in-jokes, and so very often is the use
of quotation, metaphor and cliché by both humorists. The only detailed
discussion I have seen of Wodehouse's use of quotations28 does not
even mention the essential fact that they are all to be found in a
dictionary of quotations. Like Rabelais, he uses a compilation instead
of the original source: Bartlett and Roget's Thesaurus where Rabelais
used Ravisius Textor or Caelius Rhodiginus. And in using these quota
tions both deliberately underline their nature as clichés or topoi. How
many times does Rabelais say "jusques au feu exclusivement" or "sans
les femmes et petits enfants"? How many times does Jeeves "shimmer
into a room, is Bertie caught up in the "rush and swirl of recent events,"
or is a character compared to Longfellow's description of a ship being
launched: "He moved, he stirred, he seemed to feel The rush of life
along his keel"? 29 There are even whole "set-pieces" copied from one
book to another, like the Drone's description of Uncle Fred, Major
Flood-Smith's eulogy of Valley Fields, or the picture of the public
gardens in St. Rocque. And two young lovers who are crossword
enthusiasts declare their passion out of the Dictionary of English Syn
onyms ("Will you be my wife, married woman, matron, spouse, help
meet, consort, partner or better half?").30
Wodehouse, like Rabelais, delights in the juxtaposition of styles, and
often in the combination of quotations from different sources into one

"Feet of Clay," in Nothing Serious.

Much valuable information in Usbome, especially chs. 1 and 2.
Clarke Olney, "Wodehouse and Poets," The Georgia Review 16 (1962),
392-9.
Longfellow, "The Building of the Ship," 11. 349-50 : "She starts, — she
moves — she seems to feel / The thrill of life along her keel."
"The Truth About George," in Meet Mr. Mulliner.

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 L'Esprit Créateur

sentence, which invites a type of guessing-game. Rabelais' conclusion

to Janotus de Bragmardo's appeal for the bells (G 19): "Mais, nac
petitin petetac, ticque, torche, lorne, il feut declairé hereticque; nous
les faisons comme de cire. Et plus n'en diet le déposant. Valete e
plaudite. Calepinus recensui" contains tags from five distinct literary
and legal contexts. Wodehouse's scrambled quotations are not as intel
lectually varied, but often just as funny: "It has been well said o
Bertram Wooster that when he sets his hand to the plough he do
not stop to pick daisies and let the grass grow under his feet",31 or:
"You can take a horse to the water, but you can't make it play Santa
Claus."32

As these examples show, Wodehouse s speciality is the mixed met

aphor or simile, and the best of his are well up to Rabelais' standard.
They sometimes take the form of straightforward juxtaposition of two
metaphors ("locking the stable door after the milk has been spilt").33
Or they may use startlingly eccentric description or comparison, like
Wodehouse's "silent pool of coffee"34 or "sprung at it with the vim
of an energetic bloodhound",35 and Rabelais' Jupiter "contournant la
teste comme un cinge qui avalle pillules" (QL, Prologue). Are pools of
coffee usually noisy? Bloodhounds are normally seen as lethargic, not
energetic, and where would a monkey find pills? Still another variety
dear to both is the quotation or cliché in lofty language which ends in
colloquialism. "O dieux et deesses celestes," says Panurge to the Parisian
lady (P 21), "que heureux sera celluy à qui ferez celle grace de ceste
cy accoller, de la baiser et de frotter son lart avecques elle," which
creates a similar bathetic effect to Jeeves's remark that "Full many a
glorious morning had he seen, flatter the mountain tops with sovereign
eye, and then turn into a rather nasty afternoon,"36 or to the descrip
tion of Lionel Green, who "might have been a motion-picture star
whose face had launched a thousand bags of popcorn."37
The intellectual gamesmanship here requires separating the cons
tituent elements fast enough not to be held up in one's reading. Another
aspect of the juxtaposition of styles is the disconcerting use of technical

Much Obliged, Jeeves, ch. 8.

"Jeeves and the Greasy Bird," in Plum Pie.
"Ukridge Starts a Bank Account," in Plum Pie.
"Jeeves Exerts the Old Cerebellum," in The Inimitable Jeeves.
A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 8.
The Code of the Woosters, ch. 4.
The Purloined Paperweight, ch. 2.

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 BO WEN

terminology in circumstances where the reader least expects it. Rabela

does this frequently with legal, medical, theological and scholasti
jargon, and Wodehouse does it more often than one might think. Latin
tags are frequent (rem acu tetigisti is one of Jeeves's favourites), and
we are sometimes treated to an enumeration of the Latin names of
birds found in an English garden at dawn on a July morning,38 the
technical names for the bacteria of milk,39 or the professional methods
of distinguishing false pearls from genuine ones.40 And both are likely
to slip Biblical quotations into almost any context, though of course
Rabelais always does so with polemical intent, while Wodehouse's
vicars and curates quote Scripture in order to impress their hearers
and amuse the reader, and in other cases the quotation is so well
hidden as to be almost invisible:

"Look at me. Getting busy all de year round, woiking to beat de band —"
"In prisons oft," said Jimmy.
"Sure t'ing. And chased all roun' de town."41

In all these cases: pastiche, quotation, metaphor and juxtaposition

of styles, both novelists are playing games with a reader who is pre
sumed to have the same kind of intellectual background and training
which they have. A still more general resemblance is their use of cliché,
which we have already touched on. They are always conscious that
language is composed of clichés, and they draw our attention to this
fact in remarkably similar ways. Rabelais describes Gargantua's childish
activities by means of a string of proverbial expressions (G 11), and
several episodes in the Quart Livre are built on the literal use of
metaphors like "ne trouvasmes que frire" (17). He constantly plays on
the literal and metaphorical meanings of a word, as in "les lingieres,
lorsque la poincte de leur agueille estoit rompue, ont commencé be
soigner du cul" (G 28), or the impoverished aristocrats "jouant des
haulx boys" (TL 2), or the wish: "si je montasse aussi bien comme je
avalle" (P 14). Wodehouse constantly uses this technique. Bingo is
described as a right-hand man feeling like a left-hand man42; when
Jeff Miller is told that someone hasn't a leg to stand on he replies:

Money for Nothing, ch. 6.

Doctor Sally, ch. 16.
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, ch. 12.
A Gentleman of Leisure, ch. 13.
"Bingo Bans the Bomb," in Plum Pie.

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 L'Esprit Créateur

"Awkward if he wants to roller-skate"43 ; and when Lord Ickenham

is informed that the Rev. Cuthbert Bailey has told someone to go to
hell his immediate reaction is : "Strange advice from a curate."44 Often
Wodehouse further underlines the nature of his clichés by pretending
they are original (Lord Emsworth "was as blind, to use his own neat
simile, as a bat"45), or by pretending to get them wrong ("He is as
rich as creosote, as I believe the phrase is"46). This is a speciality of
Bertie's, who often has to check with Jeeves that he has his clichés right.
There are many, many more examples of all of these techniques,
but these few suffice, I hope, to show that both writers are debunking
different levels of language in an analogous way, and expecting their
reader to realise it.

Other stylistic devices. Beyond the intellectual-snobbery aspect of

style there are many more rapprochements to be made, and here I shall
have to be inexcusably brief. One of Rabelais' specialities is fantaisie
verbale, and although Wodehouse is not a rival here he uses it superbly
on occasion. I don't know whether he made up such gems as nincto
binkus, rannygazoo, bohunkus, skrimshanker, oompus-boompus and
hunky-dory, any more than I know whether Rabelais invented incorni
fistibuler or bouttepoussenfambions, but they add a similar kind of
gusto to his prose. And listen to Wodehouse when he really wants to
play with language: "A sort of gulpy, gurgly, plobby, squishy, woffle
some sound, like a thousand eager men drinking soup in a foreign
restaurant." 47 The inventive energy expended by Rabelais on synonyms
for sexual activity is directed by Wodehouse toward insult. A few of
his best : greasy Tishbite, big chunk of boloney, herring-gutted window
cleaner and low-down, horn-swoggling, double-crossing skunk.
Like Rabelais he enjoys taking words apart, or forging new ones.
Everyone quotes the disgruntled man whom time had done nothing to
gruntle,48 and Bertie is convinced that "already I am practically Uncle
Percy's ewe lamb. That will make me still ewer." 49 But such examples
are rare; he prefers, again like Rabelais, the deformation of normal

Money in the Bank, ch. 1.

Service with a Smile, ch. 5.
Leave It to Psmith, ch. 1.
"Jeeves Makes an Omelette," in A Few Quick Ones.
"Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey !in Blandings Castle.
The Mating Season, ch. 9.
Joy in the Morning, ch. 23.

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 Bowen

speech by people who are eccentric, or drunk, or merely

side the Ecolier Limousin, Panurge's strange tongues, th
bien yvres and Homenaz we could put the French of th
Blissac and Aunt Dahlia's chef Anatole, the German of S
(in Hot Water), the professional jargon of Sir Roderick
"precious" language of literary young men like Cosmo B
Gorringe, and the sozzled Gussie Fink-Nottle's speech
Snodsbury prizegiving.
As we might expect, hyperbole is a favourite device —
say, a permanent habit of mind — of both authors. Characte
and nastier, than life: meals are huge and so are reac
house "a cascade of people falling downstairs"50 means t
startled woman's "eyes were now about the size of regula
and her breathing suggested the last stages of asthma,"
when trying not to laugh "distinctly heard a couple of m
part from their moorings under the strain."52 Most of
characters habitually overreact, which helps to enlarge
backs of their lives into disasters of epic proportions. I
Panurge usually overreacts, and the comedy often consists
his overreaction with the normal behaviour of the other
More surprisingly, Wodehouse is equally adept at litot
not, like Rabelais, describe extraordinary scenes in a ma
manner, but he does sometimes juxtapose a genuinely h
and an underreaction : "Wee Nooke had gone up in f
me quite a start."53 The most regular user of litotes is J
when Bertie cries: "Jeeves! Hell's foundations are qui
reply : "Certainly a somewhat sharp crisis in your affair
to have been precipitated, sir."
Repetition of tag phrases has already been mentioned
emphasised. Characters in both works have their own 'ref
de bréviaire, comme vous aultres, messieurs, or Prenez m
taliste in Rabelais ; and in Wodehouse Jeeves's "psych
individual," Ukridge's "Corky, old horse," or Lord Uffen
Wodehouse is especially fond of the repeated quotation, l
and anguish wring the brow," or "the f. of the species i
than the m."

50. A Pelican at Blandings, ch. 10.

51. "The Truth About George," in Meet Mr. Mulliner.
52. "Sir Roderick Conies to Lunch," in The Inimitable Jeeves.
53. Joy in the Morning, ch. 9.

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 L'Esprit Créateur

Euphemism and periphrasis are also important devices of b

though as we have seen they are used in different domains. Pant
disapproves of the Ecolier Limousin's periphrases, but Rabela
plenty of his own : l'aube des mousches for "noon" (QL 9), la rep
de dessoubz le nez for eating (P 17), and all the varied euphemism
the sexual act. Wodehouse enjoys this too : an accordion is a "stom
Steinway,"54 Bertie drinking tea is "lubricating the good old int
with a soothing cup of Oolong," 55 and in the kingdom of Oom
phrasis is the normal mode of speech ("If you know a superio
vation, go to it").56
A variety of periphrasis both are fond of is the comic use of irrelev
information to slow down the narrative or to annoy. Rabelai
known example is Dindenault praising his sheep instead of selling
to Panurge (QL 6-7), but he also does it in passing, as in this exam
(QL 9):

Vous aultres gens de l'aultre monde, tenez pour chose admirable que, d'une
famille Romaine (c'estoient les Fabians), pour un jour (ce feut la trezieme du
moys de Febvrier), par une porte (ce feut la porte Carmentale, jadis située au
pied du Capitale, entre le roc Tarpeian et le Tybre, depuys surnommée
Scelerate)...

All the information in parentheses is quite irrelevant to the matter in

hand. In Wodehouse this is one of Jeeves's specialities. He is forever
holding up the action or breaking Bertie's train of thought by finishing
quotations Bertie is not interested in, or providing information in too
much detail. In Thank You, Jeeves (ch. 21) he takes a magnificent re
venge on Mr. Stoker, who had not treated him with sufficient respect, by
giving endless irrelevant details about potting-sheds and cooks, instead of
getting to the point. This scene always reminds me of Panurge taking
revenge on Dindenault by haranguing him while he drowns.
There are other minor rhetorical devices which could be quoted here
(Rabelais's contrepèterie, as in femme molle à la fesse for femme folle
à la messe (P 16) is occasionally used by Wodehouse, as in Bertie's
"Tup, Tushy" for "Tush, Tuppy"),57 but I think the ones quoted here:
fantaisie verbale, use of unusual types of language, hyperbole, litotes,

54. "A Good Cigar is a Smoke," in Plum Pie.

55. "Startling Dressiness of a Lift Attendant," in The Inimitable Jeeves.
56. "The Coming of Gowf," in The Clicking of Cuthbert.
57. Right Ho, Jeeves, ch. 12.

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 Bowen

repetition, euphemism and periphrasis, are the most ty

esting. They indicate that however different the subject-
devices of style will help to create similar effects.

Conclusion. Is there one, or have we been merely indul

lectual parlour-games? I think the foregoing analysis doe
helpful conclusions. First and most obvious, Wodehouse'
nique, like that of any great writer, repays detailed analy
kind of analysis used for Renaissance literature has a sur
to tell us about a twentieth-century author. Secondly, despite
parade of contempt for great literature and philosophy (
speare. Sounds well but doesn't mean anything"),59 he is
a profoundly intellectual writer in many ways. And fin
resemblances between the two in all domains : plot and ac
and language, is that they are always debunking — pricki
of tyranny, hypocrisy and pretention which threaten civilisa
in anxious, turbulent times, they restore their reader t
sanity, to a world where villains are foiled and purity of
of language — must necessarily triumph. Evil is not ign
cised by the comic techniques they share (and by many o
not share), so that the final impression given is one of
confidence that the powers of darkness will not destroy
without doubt a kind of conservatism, and a comparison
vative aspects of both would be interesting. It is surely
see that at least in this case the French Renaissance mind and the modern
mind are not so far apart.

University of Illinois

58. I mention this because Henry Appia, in a sympathetic article, states that
the basis of Wodehouse's comedy is not analysable ("O rare P. G Wode
house!," Etudes Anglaises 26 [1973], 22-34).
59. Joy in the Morning, ch. 16.

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