Biography

Claude Gaignebet was one of the jurors for my thesis. I met Claude in 1985 at the University of Nice, and his rich seminars introduced me to an unexpected facet of the popular traditions of the Middle Ages. His great erudition and invaluable, judicious advice forever changed my vision of the daily life of medieval peoples. His book, Art profane et religion populaire au Moyen Âge, written in collaboration with Jean-Dominique Lajoux, (1985, PUF) is, in my opinion, a veritable "Bible" for anyone wishing to understand festivity, entertainment and, in particular, carnival in the Middle Ages.

Biography:

Born in Damascus in 1938, he studied medicine in Paris, followed by sociology, psychology and ethnology. He studied with Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roger Bastide, Jacques Lacan, Pierre Bourdieu and André Leroi-Gourhan. At the end of the 1960s, he defended his doctoral thesis on Le Folklore obscène des enfants under the supervision of Roger Bastide, with Jacques Lacan and Georges-Henri Rivière on the jury. His 3,000-page doctorate, defended in 1984, was devoted to the study of Rabelais's esotericism, both spiritual and carnal. Jacques Le Goff and Jean Céard were on the jury. He was also a lecturer at various Paris universities (Paris-I, -III, -VII, -VIII, -X) and in Strasbourg, before being appointed Professor at theUniversity of Nice Sophia-Antipolis from 1984 to 2002. A specialist in François Rabelais and a great connoisseur of both popular traditions and scriptural sources from Antiquity and the Middle Ages, as was Rabelais himself, Claude Gaignebet proposed a "more hault sense" reading of the work of the greatest writer of the 16th century, thanks in particular to the folkloric and calendrical keys he was able to recognize in it. Last but not least, everyone marveled at Gaignebet's art: his loquaciousness, his inexhaustible knowledge, his sense of humor and his ability to counterpoint made him an exceptional orator. With his ever-present thirst for life, communication and learning, he was hailed by Jean Baumgarten as "a humanly exceptional man who courageously defended disciplines that are currently too much in disrepair, bringing them to their point of excellence". Claude Gaignebet remains a stimulating example in a narrow academic world where outstanding individualities have little place. On the bangs by taste and fate, this exceptional researcher was also a formidable living soul. He left us on February 6, 2012, at the height of the carnival season...

Source: Le Monde, February 09, 2012 and Wikipedia.