Gargantua and Pantagruel
La vie très horrifique du grand Gargantua, père de Pantagruel
A great book. First published AD 1534, written in Middle French
The Five Books of the Lives and Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel, often shortened to Gargantua and Pantagruel or the Cinq Livres, is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It tells 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".
Your reading
Where it is set
- Paris
France
This education renders him a great fool, and he is later sent to Paris with a new tutor. Source: Wikipedia, reviewed
Its heirs
Later works that draw on Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Gulliver's TravelsGreat book
Jonathan Swift, AD 1726
Rabelais' giants and absurd voyages stand behind Gulliver's giants and little people: satire made from changes of scale, learned nonsense, and the human body seen too close.
Source: Wikipedia, Gargantua and Pantagruel
“Rabelais' fame and influence increased after Urquhart's translation; later, there were many perceptive imitators, including Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels) and Laurence Sterne (Tristram Shandy).”
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