Gargantua and Pantagruel

The Five Books of the Lives and Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel (), often shortened to Gargantua and Pantagruel or the (Five Books), 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".

The work was stigmatised as obscene by the censors of the . In a social climate of increasing religious oppression in the lead up to the French Wars of Religion, contemporaries treated it with suspicion and avoided mentioning it.

The characters of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel were not created by Rabelais but inspired by various folk tales which had been collated in the early sixteenth century into five different works, collectively referred to as the Gargantuan Chronicles, the most popular of which, Les Grandes et Inestimables Cronicques du grant et enorme geant Gargantua, Rabelais references in his prologue.

It is the origin of the word , meaning "buffoonery or coarse humor with a satirical or serious purpose"; and also , meaning "enormous".

Initial publication

The novels were written progressively without a preliminary plan.

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! Short title

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| 1

| Pantagruel

|Les horribles et épouvantables faits et prouesses du très renommé Pantagruel Roi des Dipsodes, fils du Grand Géant Gargantua

|The Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of the Very Renowned Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes, Son of the Great Giant Gargantua

| 2

| Gargantua

|La vie très horrifique du grand Gargantua, père de Pantagruel

|The Very Horrific Life of Great Gargantua, Father of Pantagruel

|1534

| 3

| The Third Book of Pantagruel

|Le tiers livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel

|The Third Book of the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Good Pantagruel

|1546

| 4

| The Fourth Book of Pantagruel

|Le quart livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel

|The Fourth Book of the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Good Pantagruel

|1552

| 5

| The Fifth Book of Pantagruel

|Le cinquiesme et dernier livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel

|The Fifth and Last Book of the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Good Pantagruel

Synopsis

Pantagruel

thumb|upright|A [[Gustave Doré illustration of a young Pantagruel, who drinks the milk of thousands of cows]]

The full modern English title for the work commonly known as Pantagruel is The Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of the Very Renowned Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes, Son of the Great Giant Gargantua and in French, Les horribles et épouvantables faits et prouesses du très renommé Pantagruel Roi des Dipsodes, fils du Grand Géant Gargantua. The original title of the work was Pantagruel roy des dipsodes restitué à son naturel avec ses faictz et prouesses espoventables. Although most 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", (Rabelais died in 1553.) and that somebody, "after some adding and padding", which he cites in support of his opinion. J. M. Cohen, in his Introduction to a Penguin Classics edition, indicates that chapters 17–48 were so out-of-character as to be seemingly written by another person, with the Fifth Book "clumsily patched together by an unskilful editor."

Bakhtin's analysis of Rabelais

Mikhail Bakhtin's book Rabelais and His World (published in 1965) explores Gargantua and Pantagruel and is considered a classic of Renaissance studies. Bakhtin declares that for centuries Rabelais' book had been misunderstood. Throughout Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin attempts two things. First, to recover sections of Gargantua and Pantagruel that in the past were either ignored or suppressed. Secondly, to conduct an analysis of the Renaissance social system in order to discover the balance between language that was permitted and language which was not. but used to store items of high value. In Socrates, and particularly in The Symposium, Rabelais found a person who exemplified many paradoxes, and provided a precedent for his "own brand of serious play". In these opening pages of Gargantua, Rabelais exhorts the reader "to disregard the ludicrous surface and seek out the hidden wisdom of his book"; and Gargantua and Pantagruel covers "the entire satirical spectrum". Its "combination of diverse satirical traditions" The full extent of Rabelais' influence is complicated by the known existence of a chapbook, probably called The History of Gargantua, translated around 1567; and the Songes drolatiques Pantagruel (1565), ascribed to Rabelais, and used by Inigo Jones. This complication manifests itself, for example, in Shakespeare's As You Like It, where "Gargantua's mouth" is mentioned;

English translations

Urquhart and Motteux

The work was first translated into English by Thomas Urquhart (the first three books) and Peter Anthony Motteux (the fourth and fifth) in the late seventeenth-century. Terence Cave, in an introduction to an Everyman's Library edition, notes that both adapted the anti-Catholic satire. Moreover,

<blockquote>The translation is also extremely free. Urquhart's rendering of the first three books is half as long again as the original. Many of the additions spring from a cheerful espousal of Rabelais's copious style. [...] Le Motteux is a little more restrained, but he too makes no bones about adding material of his own. [...] It is a literary work in its own right.</blockquote>

Smith

William Francis Smith (1842–1919) made a translation in 1893, trying to match Rabelais' sentence forms exactly, which renders the English obscure in places. For example, the convent prior exclaims against Friar John when the latter bursts into the chapel,

<blockquote>What will this drunken Fellow do here? Let one take me him to prison. Thus to disturb divine Service!</blockquote>

Smith's version includes copious notes.

Donald M. Frame, with his own translation, says that Smith "was an excellent scholar; but he shuns R's obscenities and lacks his raciness". and, elsewhere, says it is "better than nothing".

From The Third Book, Chapter Seven: <blockquote>'Odsbody! On this bureau of mine my paymaster had better not play around with stretching the esses, or my fists would go trotting all over him!</blockquote>

Screech

Penguin published a translation by M. A. Screech in 2006 which incorporates textual variants; and brief notes on sources, puns, and allusions. In a translator's note, he says: "My aim here for Rabelais (as for my Penguin Montaigne) is to turn him loyally into readable and enjoyable English."</blockquote>

List of English translations

Complete translations

Thomas Urquhart (1653) and Peter Anthony Motteux (1694)
Thomas Urquhart (1653) and Peter Anthony Motteux (1694), revised by John Ozell (1737)
Thomas Urquhart (1653) and Peter Anthony Motteux (1694), revised by Alfred Wallis (1897)
William Francis Smith (1893)
Jacques Leclercq (1936)
Samuel Putnam (1948)
J. M. Cohen (1955)
Burton Raffel (1990)
Donald M. Frame (1991)
Michael Andrew Screech (2006)

Partial translation

Andrew Brown (2003; revised 2018); books 1 and 2 only

Illustrations

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<div class="thumbcaption">An example of the giants' shift in body size, above where people are the size of Pantagruel's foot, and below where Gargantua is under twice the height of a human.</div>

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The most famous and reproduced illustrations for Gargantua and Pantagruel were done by French artist Gustave Doré and published in 1854. Over 400 additional drawings were done by Doré for the 1873 second edition of the book. An edition published in 1904 was illustrated by W. Heath Robinson. Another set of illustrations was created by French artist Joseph Hémard and published in 1922. Frank C. Papé illustrated an edition published in 1927.

The first two books were the basis for the 1979 comic book Gargantua e Pantagruel by Dino Battaglia.

Notes

References

External links

, translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart and illustrated by Gustave Doré.
Gargantua and Pantagruel (in French) at Association de Bibliophiles Universels