Drawing on the classical concept of rhetorical "dispositio," this study gives new interpretations of a number of literary texts of the French Renaissance (Rabelais, Du Bellay, Montaigne and others). The often problematic ordering of these texts is studied from a variety of perspectives, historical, theoretical and cultural.

Paul J. Smith, Ph.D. (1985) in French Literature, University of Leiden, is Professor of French Literature at the University of Leiden. He has published extensively on the early modern and modern French literature and its reception in the Netherlands. He is co-editor of Montaigne and the Low Countries (1580-1700) (Brill, 2007).