Gargantua and Pantagruel: 7the Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel

I discovered Rabelais while reading Durant's Story of Civilization. After reading such a strong endorsement I decided to get a copy of his works to see if he was really as good as was described. I've always had a somewhat different sense of humor (I love Monty Python), and have always liked satire; so I thought I would like Rabelais. It turns out I really liked him. Sometimes he was a bit crude for my tastes, but he was hilarious. In general I liked the first two books more than the later books. They were a little more wild and inconsistent, but a lot more fun. Panurge was probably my favorite character in the first book; in the third book he was a key character, but by the last two books he was a somewhat annoying character. A quick summary of the books is below. Pantagruel is the story of the birth and early life of the Giant Pantagruel, which was probably the most hilarious of the books. Gargantua is the story of the birth and life of Panagruel's father Gargantua; this was also quite funny covering several topics. The 3rd book of Pantagruel contains two main themes; the first is a discussion between Pantagruel and Panurge on debtors and borrowers. Panurge gives the funniest discourse on the need for debtors I have ever seen. The rest of the book tells of Panurge consulting every imaginable method of seeing the future to see if he should marry. The 4th book is basically a travel log similar to Gulliver's travels where Pantagruel and his friends go on a long sea trip finding many interesting lands. The 5th book is a continuation of the 4th book. Note that the 5th book is of questionable authorship. As far as the translation goes, I was impressed; but note that this is the only translation I have read. I found the prose very understandable, but appreciated the footnotes where I didn't understand it. The footnotes were also useful to me since I am a neophyte in 16th century French life and culture. Screech did a good job explaining things including the literature Rabelais was referring to. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good introduction to Rabelais. It would be good for many of our modern comedy writers to read these books to give them some better ideas for TV shows and movies. I'm convinced the Monty Python writers must have read Rabelais.

Gorgeously edited by Screech, this is an overwhelming joy to read, and well worth getting if you have any interest in Bakhtin.

I was gonna compare this one to Don Quixote to see another reviewer beat me to it! Well I shall anyway.Both are one of the first examples of novels, both are extremely long, both are successful and funny satires of society (in this case of the 16th century) at large.The difference is this book is much less philosophical and more slapstick. It has less high concepts and more toilet jokes. But that's what I found great about it! It is much more farcical and is about the furthest you can get away from realism. The author does not try to be consistent in terms of scale (the book - made up of five books - chronicles the life of the giants Gargantua and his son Pantagruel) but that's the point. Every conceivable historical figure and literary work is mocked.I think this is one of the first postmodern works(!). Rabelais experiments with heaps of different text types, he has certain chapters which are lists of things pertaining to happenings (like insults hurled by two characters at each other - over 100 in all) etc etc. He goes off on tangents, talks about all the topics on earth from scholarship to sign language. And the antics of the characters are hilarious.Personally I found this just a tad better than Don Quixote (4 stars). Yes, this book is also a tad too long. But it's actually five books and with short chapters on diverse topics, you can just pick it up and read another chapter. The translation is great, using white space and punctuation in a very unique way and highlighting the comic nature of the book. In fact, Urquhart's translation is a masterpiece in itself.A great, great book to knock down your sense of decency and pompousness.

The praisers of Rabelais and this particular product he created have already expressed a lot of the truths to be found here, the exquisite style, the masterly satire. All they say is true and would be reason enough to read Gargantuan and Pentagruel. I won't repeat those laurels to affirm them. Instead, I'll suggest another reason a segment of readers might find Rabelais interesting. Followers of the Thelemic 'traditon' created by Aleister Crowley during the early 1900s might be surprised to discover Crowley's claims to having channeled the doctrine from Horus in Cairo in 1910, were preceded by Rabelais several centuries earlier. Rabelais creats an imaginary monastary and sect of monks he names, "Thelema", where a sign above the entry reads, "DO AS YOU WILL". Sound familiar? Buy this book and read on. But if you do so as an admirer of Crowley's channeling be prepared to experience a deflating of some of your balloons and butchering of a sacred cow for the barbeque.

If you thought the vulgar humor in such films as PORKY'S and AMERICAN PIE was a modern phenomena, you're in for a shock: both are fairly mild in comparison with the works of Rabelais, which plumb the depths of human crassness in full Renaissance style. Writing before European authors had codified the novel as a form, Rabelais presents a series of very episodic tales about the adventures of the giant Gargantua, his son Pantagruel, and Pantagruel's trickster friend Panurge--and the three vomit, belch, fart, and engage in a number of equally distasteful bodily functions across page after page in some of the funniest writings found in the whole of Western literature.But unlike contemporary bad-taste comedy, Rabelais is hardly willing to let his reader go with just a laugh. There is sharp intelligence behind his naughty laughter--and he directs his considerable wit at everything from education to fashionable society in page after page of unspeakably hilarious incident. (My own favorite passage concerns the trick Panurge plays upon the fashionable, church-going lady who spurns his attentions; it never fails to throw me into near-hysterical laughter.) Vividly written and extremely memorable, GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL is the sort of stuff they don't teach in highschool... and more's the pity: it would probably convert more students to the classics than all the Romantics combined. Truly serious scholars should, of course, compare various translations, but the Cohen translation will do the trick for the more casual reader. Strongly recommended.