ABSTRACT
In the antithetical structure, underscored at once by the similarity of the staging and the gap inserted between each of the episodes, the beginning of an 'animal act' can be discerned. Panurge is initially described as a lean figure, of an elegance that has been marred by quirks of fate and history. The meeeting of Pantagruel and Panurge seems to be just that: it 'prehends' the entire work in the ways its own zones of expression turn the characters and, ourselves, their prehenders, into Pantagruel-animals. When Panurge is described affectively before being planted in Pantagruel's field of vision, the figure floats in, and hence brings into visibility, a spatially but actively indeterminate zone. To show how, the authors specify how devenir-animal has variants such as devenir-chien, devenir-enfant, and devenir-fleur that are isomorphic with devenir-femme. The attention drawn to the pocked body of the man-animal precedes its articulation as a vanishing point in a perspectival view in the narrative picture.
