Abbey of Thélème

From Freepedia

The Abbey of Thélème is a metaphorical society found in the fantasy Gargantua and Pantagruel written by François Rabelais in the sixteenth century. It is sort of a utopia, but one found in a comedy, not an earnest proposal for social change. It is a systematic inversion of the rules of a monastery of his era. Instead of being a crude building to which persons retreat to spend the rest of their lives humbly and separate from the opposite sex, following rules for every activity of life, particularly those for daily labor, he presents a luxuriant building in which persons of both sexes dress finely and dine luxuriously and play, and if they choose, they may permanently leave as couples. As he noted that many persons who ended up in monasteries were persons who did not fit in with the outside world for other than their spirituality, he further states that his abbey would accept only those of the finest sort, even in appearance. And as persons stayed to become very old in abbeys, he states that his would be young.

The name of the abbey comes from the Greek word for "will." The one rule Rabelais proposes is that all present in the same room will do the same thing, such as sing or dance. This law he states, in translation, as "Do what thou wilt," which has become used in the twentieth century by persons opposed to any religious commandment.

There are several philosophical explanations of this allegory. The simplest is that it is merely a systematic inversion, and not meant to be taken seriously. However, as the metaphor of the Abbey of Thélème has great attraction - from the twentieth century, it was taken to symbolize a co-educational college campus - many wish for it to be really a presentation of a moral truth. Hence it is used to justify the notion that, in the absence of restraint or restriction, people will naturally act morally. This in turn is countered by the observations that the luxuriance and lack of goal-direction in the depicted campus indicate that there must be people who serve the abbeists but who do not share in its lifestyle, and that one really cannot pre-select people and state that they will turn out to be good and have it work out.

Two religious explanations present themselves in addition. One is that it was a form of commentary on actual abbeys in his time. The most profound derives from a statement by the fifth-century writer Saint Augustine, which was surely known to Rabelais: "Love God and do what thou wilt"; this being a poetic way of viewing the motivation of someone who was religiously converted.