Parts and (W)holes: Confronting the Human in Molinet’s Graphic Games

Abstract

The Burgundian rhétoriqueur Jean Molinet (1435–1507) often employs pictorial elements to express aural effects, artfully exploiting a complementary tension between sonority and visuality. Nowhere is this tension more apparent than in the bawdy ballade Dame, j’ay sentu les façons, in which crude anatomical drawings represent the sounds con, cul, and vis. Inasmuch as the rebus posits an interchangeability of speech sounds and anatomical structures, it necessitates an integration of the body and the word: the resulting body of work becomes a cyborg of sorts, a posthuman construct assembled from fleshly organs and their phonemic replacements. This effect is compounded by the identity of the poet, Molinet, who—true to the rhétoriqueurs’ predilection for punning—frequently identifies himself as a machine (molinet, little mill) and is typically depicted in frontispiece illustrations, rebus-like, with the image of a windmill. In these and other graphic games, Molinet suggests a textual world that can only come into being through a collaborative give-and-take between the mechanical and the human.