L’Enfer d’Epistemon et les cris de Paris

We argue that the poetic, theatrical, musical, and iconographic genre of “cris de Paris” should be taken into account in the interpretation of chapter XXX of Pantagruel. Not only do three of the eighty-six damned become hawkers seeking to attract customers, but many of the occupations imagined by Rabelais also appear in Clément Janequin’s chanson Voulez ouyr les cris de Paris? (c. 1530), which appeared in the 1510s with a series of eighteen colored engravings, as well as in the Sottie des cris de Paris.