Gargantua and Pantagruel
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"Gargantua" redirects here. For other uses, see Gargantua (disambiguation).
Gargantua and Pantagruel is a connected series of five books written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It is the story of two giants, a father (Gargantua) and his son (Pantagruel) and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein. There is much crudity and scatological humor as well as needless violence. Long lists of vulgar insults fill several chapters.
Rabelais was one of the first Frenchmen to learn Ancient Greek, from which he brought some 500 words into the French language. His quibbling and other wordplay fills the book, and is quite free from any prudishness.
The introduction to the cookie series runs (in an English translation):
- Good friends, my Readers, who peruse this Book,
- Be not offended, whilst on it you look:
- Denude yourselves of all depraved affection,
- For it contains no badness, nor infection:
- 'Tis true that it brings forth to you no birth
- Of any value, but in point of mirth;
- Thinking therefore how sorrow might your mind
- Consume, I could no apter subject find;
- One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span;
- Because to laugh is proper to the man.
Contents |
[edit] Synopsis
[edit] Pantagruel
Although modern editions of Rabelais' work place Pantagruel as the second volume of a series, it was actually published first, around 1532 under the pen name Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram of François Rabelais. Pantagruel was a sequel to an anonymous book entitled Les Grandes Chroniques du Grand et Enorme Géant Gargantua. This early Gargantua text enjoyed great popularity, despite its rather poor construction. Rabelais's giants are not described as being of any fixed height, as in the first two books of Gulliver's Travels, but vary in size from chapter to chapter to enable a series of astonishing images as though these were tall tales. For example, in one chapter Pantagruel is able to fit into a courtroom to argue a case but in another the narrator resides inside Pantagruel's mouth for 6 months and discovers an entire nation living around his teeth.
[edit] Gargantua
After the success of Pantagruel, Rabelais revisited and revised his source material. He produced an improved narrative of the life and acts of Pantagruel's father in Gargantua. This volume included one of the most notable parables in Western Philosophy: that of the Abbey of Thélème, which can either be considered a point-for-point critique of the educational practices of the age, or a call to free schooling, or all sorts of notions on human nature.
[edit] Le Tiers-Livre
Rabelais then returned to the story of Pantagruel himself in the last three books. The third book concerns Pantagruel and his friend Panurge, who spend the entire book discussing with many people the question of whether Panurge should marry; the question is unresolved. The book ends with the start of a sea voyage in search of the oracle of the divine bottle to resolve once and for all the question of marriage.
[edit] Le Quart-Livre
The sea voyage continues for the whole of the Quart-Livre. Pantagruel encounters many exotic and strange characters and societies during this voyage, such as the Shysteroos, who make their living by charging people to beat them up.
The whole book can be seen as a comical retelling of the Odyssey or - more convincingly - of the story Jason and the Argonauts. In the Quart-Livre, which has been described as his most satirical book, Rabelais criticizes the arrogance and wealth of the Roman Catholic Church, the political figures of the time, popular superstitions and addresses several religious, political, linguistic and philosophical issues.
[edit] Fifth Book
At the end of the fifth volume, which was published posthumously around 1564, the divine bottle is found. The epic journey ends with Pantagruel producing a large turd, perhaps the ultimate commentary on the subjects of politics and religion which the books satirize.
Although some parts of book 5 are truly worthy of Rabelais, the last volume's attribution to him is debatable. Book five was not published until nine years after Rabelais's death and includes much material that is clearly borrowed (such as from Lucian's True History and Colonna's Dream Battle of Polyphile) or of lesser quality than the previous books. In the notes to his translation of Gargantua and Pantegruel, Donald M. Frame proposes that book 5 may have been formed from unfinished material that a publisher later patched together into a book.
[edit] Analysis
Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and His World explores Gargantua and Pantagruel and is considered a classic of Renaissance studies (Clark and Holquist 295). Bakhtin declares that, for centuries, Rabelais’ book had been misunderstood, and claimed that Rabelais and His World clarified Rabelais’ intentions. In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin concerns himself with the openness of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Throughout the text, Bakhtin attempts two things: he seeks to recover sections of Gargantua and Pantagruel that, in the past, were either ignored or suppressed, and conducts an analysis of the Renaissance social system in order to discover the balance between language that was permitted and language which was not. It is by means of this analysis that Bakhtin pinpoints two important subtexts in Rabelais work: the first is carnival which Bakhtin describes as a social institution, and the second is grotesque realism which is defined as a literary mode. Thus, in Rabelais and His World Bakhtin studies the interaction between the social and the literary, as well as the meaning of the body (Clark and Holquist 297-299).
Bakhtin explains that carnival, in Rabelais work and age, is associated with the collectivity; for those attending a carnival do not merely constitute a crowd; rather the people are seen as a whole, organized in a way that defies socioeconomic and political organization (Clark and Holquist 302). According to Bakhtin, “[A]ll were considered equal during carnival. Here, in the town square, a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among people who were usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age” (Bakhtin 10). At carnival time, the unique sense of time and space causes the individual to feel he is a part of the collectivity, at which point he ceases to be himself. It is at this point that, through costume and mask, an individual exchanges bodies and is renewed. At the same time there arises a heightened awareness of one’s sensual, material, bodily unity and community (Clark and Holquist 302).
Bakhtin says also that in Rabelais the notion of carnival is connected with that of the grotesque. The collectivity partaking in the carnival is aware of its unity in time as well as its historic immorality associated with its continual death and renewal. According to Bakhtin, the body is in need of a type of clock if it to be aware of its timelessness. The grotesque is the term used by Bakhtin to describe the emphasis of bodily changes through eating, evacuation, and sex: it is used as a measuring device (Clark and Holquist 303).
[edit] References
- The series in the original French is entitled La Vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel. Available English translations include The Complete Works of François Rabelais by Donald M. Frame and Five Books of the Lives, Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Gargantua and Pantagruel, translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Pierre Antoine Motteux.
- Mikhail Bakhtin (1941) Rabelais and his world, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
- Clark, Katerina, and Michael Holquist. Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.
- Holquist, Michael. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World, Second Edition. Routledge, 2002.
[edit] See also
- The cover of the Frank Zappa album The Grand Wazoo depicts the battle between Gargantua and Picrocole (book I, chap. LII)
