Chapter 4, Chapter 2 - The Language of the Marketplace Summary and Analysis

Shortly after the author informs readers about billingsgate, he begins to write about the boy. In this case, he means both the image of the boy and the reality of it. There is the boy as a universal as well as a sample character. The author writes briefly of the village boy and his exuberance while playing; here, innocence is attached to hurling excrement and to mudslinging. In this case, the village boy is playfully self-indulgent rather than malicious or cruel. A certain presence or lack of cruelty seems to be innate but people can be trained in either direction—away from it, or to nurture it. Mikhail then writes that Rabelais' image of the village boy is inadequate: he justifies this claim by citing that...