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The dazzling and exuberant moral stories of Rabelais (c. 1471-1553)
expose human follies with their mischievous and often obscene
humour, while intertwining the realistic with carnivalesque fantasy
to make us look afresh at the world. Gargantua depicts a young
giant, reduced to laughable insanity by an education at the hands
of paternal ignorance, old crones and syphilitic professors, who is
rescued and turned into a cultured Christian knight. And in
Pantagruel and its three sequels, Rabelais parodied tall tales of
chivalry and satirized the law, theology and academia to portray
the bookish son of Gargantua who becomes a Renaissance Socrates,
divinely guided in his wisdom, and his idiotic, self-loving
companion Panurge.
Pantagruel recounts the life of a popular giant. From his
portentous birth and colorful childhood, to his visit to Paris and
his travels through Utopia, and not withstanding his enormous
appetite, Pantagruel's history is told with a breathtaking degree
of gaiety and wit. Ingeniously coining new expressions, and with an
unashamed obsession with bodily functions, Rabelais blends prose
and poetry, the sacred and profane, to offer a heady satire of the
religious society of his day. Physician and humanist Franois
Rabelais (c. 1494-1553) was a leading figure in Renaissance France.
Rip-roaring and rib-tickling, Francois Rabelais' irreverent story
of the giant Gargantua, his giant son Pantagruel, and their
companion Panurge is a classic of the written word. This complete
translation by Donald Frame, helpfully annotated for the
nonspecialist, is a masterpiece in its own right, bringing to
twentieth-century English all the exuberance and invention of the
original sixteenth-century French. A final part containing all the
rest of Rabelais' known writings, including his letters,
supplements the five books traditionally known as Gargantua and
Pantagruel. This great comic narrative, written in hugely popular
installments over more than two decades, was unsparingly satirical
of scholarly pomposity and the many abuses of religious, legal, and
political power. The books were condemned at various times by the
Sorbonne and narrowly escaped being banned. Behind Rabelais'
obvious pleasure in lampooning effete erudition and the excesses of
society is the humanist's genuine love of knowledge and belief in
the basic goodness of human nature. The bawdy wit and uninhibited
zest for life that characterize his unlikely trio of travelers have
delighted readers and inspired other writers ever since the
exploits of Gargantua and Pantagruel first appeared.
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