Product Description

A fantasy of life amongst the monks and friars of 16th-century France. Within the text, Rabelais espouses a positive view of life in which tolerance, goodness, understanding and wisdom are opposed to dogmatism, pride and cruelty.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #539781 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-22
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 832 pages

From the Author
Reading Gargantua today, it’s possible to see that Rabelais is the begetter of the picaresque novel. Like Cervantes, he is in tune with the unexpected. Nothing seems pre-ordained or designed to a plan – the storyteller (and Rabelais is a consummate storyteller and anecdotist of the most buttonholing kind) is free to go where he wishes, taking his characters with him. The method, such as it is, ensures continous surprise, and surprise is of the essence in such loose-limbed art. You feel, as you read, that Rabelais is delighting himself with his own conceits, but not indulgently so. He’s a satirist, too, and satire is the expression of contempt for the status quo. Rabelais loved, and was intrigued by, his fellow man, but there are aspects of authority that have to be ridiculed. And not just authority, since everyday meanness – financial as well as spiritual – has to be mocked. - From the Foreword by Paul Bailey

From the Inside Flap
'Gargantua, from the age of three to five years old, was brought up and educated in every suitable discipline as his father ordered, and he spent this time like the small children of his country, in other words, drinking, eating, and sleeping; eating, sleeping, and drinking; sleeping, drinking, and eating.'

About the Author
Andrew Brown studied at the University of Cambridge, where he taught French for many years. He now works as a freelance teacher and translator. Paul Bailey has so far written eight novels, a memoir, a biography and edited several anthologies. He is also a frequent contributor to Radio and TV and works as a critic and reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and other newspapers.

Customer Reviews

Sugar-coated philosophy
This is by far one of the most entertaining works of classical fiction ever written. Like the spoon full of sugar that helps the medicine go down, Rabelais' scatological humour renders his philosophical message, along with his criticisms of his contemporaries, very accessible. In tone it resembles other French classics, such as Voltaire's "Candide", and links can be easily drawn with the works of his fellow Humanists, such as Erasmus. Be warned, however that due to the nature of the subject matter and the humour, this is probably not a good choice for children, the impressionable, and people who find bodily functions, occasionally veiled slightly by euphemism, to be offensive.