ABSTRACT
The story of Philomela as it is told or cited in the Western literary tradition preserves the taboo even while breaking it, since its narrative always articulates a radical silence, a deprivation of the power of speech. It may thus be regarded as the paradigm of what is at stake when someone undertakes to recount an experience so alien that it is unspeakable. In the Medamothi episode, the theme of otherness is explicitly present from the outset in the narrative context: this is the first landing of the Pantagrueline fleet on a foreign island. For Marc-Antoine Muret, one of the very first readers of the sonnet, the allusion to Philomela, however fleeting and discreet it may seem, moves into the foreground. Neither Rabelais nor Ronsard presents Philomela's story in an ethical, or even a merely sympathetic, perspective. Shakespeare's version, then, fulfils the requirements of the painting purchased by Panurge: it is 'other' and 'intelligible'.
