Abstract: Pierre Belon’s Histoire de la nature des oyseaux (1555) and Laurent Joubert’s Erreurs populaires au fait de la medecine et regime de santé (1578) both make use of fictional elements drawn from the chronicle of Pantagruel and establish Rabelais as an authority figure, whether playful or serious, in their respective scientific domains. This practice is particularly notable in that it differs from that of most of the imitators of Rabelais in the second half of the sixteenth century.
