Gargantua and La Rebelión de las Ratas

Dialectics Between Rich and Poor in the Struggle for the Word

Abstract

In the following document a synthesis of the central ideas put forward by François Rabelais and Fernando Soto Aparicio in Gargantua and La rebelión de las ratas, respectively, with the aim of establishing an interpretative relationship based on the concept of dialogue proposed by Hans-Georg Gadamer. From a comprehensive-interpretative hermeneutic approach, the article analyzes the understanding of war projected in both works, interpreting its meaning through the study of characters, conflict, war, and the change in the meaning of the word. Although, from Gadamerian hermeneutic theory, conceiving war as dialogue could be understood as an error, given that Gadamer does not conceive it as such. This analysis makes it possible to broaden the notion of dialogue by evidencing two forms of war in the texts: one characterized by imposition and violence—as a dialogue of war—and another mediated by the word, close to hermeneutic dialogue, although not necessarily to rational dialogue.