Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

Overview

The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, telling the adventures of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. The work is written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein; features much erudition, vulgarity, and wordplay; and is regularly compared with the works of William Shakespeare and James Joyce. Rabelais was a polyglot, and the work introduced "a great number of new and difficult words into the French language". The work was stigmatised as obscene by the censors of the Collège de la Sorbonne, and, within a social climate of increasing religious oppression in a lead up to the French Wars of Religion, it was treated with suspicion, and contemporaries avoided mentioning it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783968656366
Publisher:	Otbebookpublishing
Publication date:	01/13/2021
Series:	Classics To Go
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	802
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

François Rabelais; (born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553) was a French Renaissance writer, physician, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes, and songs. Because of his literary power and historical importance, Western literary critics consider him one of the great writers of world literature and among the creators of modern European writing. His best known work is Gargantua and Pantagruel. His literary legacy is such that the word Rabelaisian has been coined as a descriptive inspired by his work and life. Merriam-Webster defines the word as describing someone or something that is "marked by gross robust humor, extravagance of caricature, or bold naturalism".

What People are Saying About This

Alain Renoir

Raffel has done the impossible...he has produced a text that is amazingly true to the meaning and the linguistic gusto of the original.

J. P. Donleavy

Grand to see this new rendition of a work full of what life is all about and translated with an equal authenticity.

Editorial Reviews

``Plainly, translating Rabelais is extraordinarily difficult,'' writes Raffel in his preface. Indeed, Rabelais (1483?-1554?) is not easy to read in the original Middle French, with its long, intricate sentences and its immense vocabulary mixing erudition, obscenities, and scatology. The reader will find here the comic chronicles of two giants, Gargantua and his son, Pantagruel (and let's not forget Pantagruel's companion, Panurge) exploring and passing judgment on all aspects of the life of their times. A satire on religion, education, and law appears alongside unabashed descriptions of bodily functions and desires. Parts of the work were censured upon publication, and since that time timid modern French and English translations have freely expurgated segments of the text. Fortunately, Raffel has not and, having wrestled with this difficult text, has provided us with a classic work, restored to its original complexity, humor, and gusto.-- Danielle Mihram, Univ. of Southern California

Library Journal

"Grand to see this new rendition of a work full of what life is all about and translated with an equal authenticity."

J. P. Donleavy

"Raffel has done the impossible. . . . [He] has produced a text which is amazingly true to the meaning and the linguistic gusto of the original."

Alain Renoir