Pantagruel and Gargantua: Newly Translated and Annotated (Alma Classics Evergreens)

(Paperback)

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With his birth itself a monumental exploit in itself, it is clear that the giant Pantagruel is destined to great things, and the novel that bears his name chronicles his the remarkable life of the exuberant youth: from his voracious reading habits to his escapades with the knave Panurge and his prowess in battle. The second work in this volume deals with the history of his father Gargantua, whose biography is equally if not more outlandish and larger than life. But these bawdy and boisterous tales, with their fixation on food and faeces, are not just entertaining yarns, as Franois Rabelais, one of the foremost humanists of the sixteenth century, parodies medieval learning, lambasts the established church authority and develops his own ideal visions for the ordering of society.

Reviews

Andrew Brown... creates a wholly credible, modern, reinvigorated Rabelais who still jumps off the page after more than 450 years. * TLS *
Long before there was James Joyce, there was the experimental literary chaos of Rabelais. * The Guardian *

Author Bio

The monk and French Renaissance polymath Franois Rabelais (c.14941553), best known for his novels Pantagruel and Gargantua, is considered one of the greatest writers of early-modern European literature.