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The Complete Works of François Rabelais
Rip-roaring and rib-tickling, François Rabelais's irreverent story of the giant Gargantua, his giant son Pantagruel, and their companion Panurge is a classic of the written word. This complete translation by Donald Frame, helpfully annotated for the nonspecialist, is a masterpiece in its own right, bringing to twentieth-century English all the exuberance and invention of the original sixteenth-century French. A final part containing all the rest of Rabelais's known writings, including his letters, supplements the five books traditionally known as Gargantua and Pantagruel .
This great comic narrative, written in hugely popular installments over more than two decades, was unsparingly satirical of scholarly pomposity and the many abuses of religious, legal, and political power. The books were condemned at various times by the Sorbonne and narrowly escaped being banned. Behind Rabelais's obvious pleasure in lampooning effete erudition and the excesses of society is the humanist's genuine love of knowledge and belief in the basic goodness of human nature. The bawdy wit and uninhibited zest for life that characterize his unlikely trio of travelers have delighted readers and inspired other writers ever since the exploits of Gargantua and Pantagruel first appeared.
This great comic narrative, written in hugely popular installments over more than two decades, was unsparingly satirical of scholarly pomposity and the many abuses of religious, legal, and political power. The books were condemned at various times by the Sorbonne and narrowly escaped being banned. Behind Rabelais's obvious pleasure in lampooning effete erudition and the excesses of society is the humanist's genuine love of knowledge and belief in the basic goodness of human nature. The bawdy wit and uninhibited zest for life that characterize his unlikely trio of travelers have delighted readers and inspired other writers ever since the exploits of Gargantua and Pantagruel first appeared.
1114 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1534
65 people are currently reading
629 people want to read
About the author
François Rabelais
1,246 books446 followersFrench humanist François Rabelais wrote satirical attacks, most notably
Pantagruel
(1532) and
Gargantua
(1534), on medieval scholasticism and superstition.
People historically regarded this major Renaissance doctor of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes, and songs. Considered of the great of world literature, he created modern Europe. He also published under the names Alcofribas Nasier and Séraphin Calobarsy.
François Rabelais était un des grand écrivains de la Renaissance française, médecin et humaniste. Il a toujours été considéré comme un écrivain de fantaisie, de satire, de grotesque et à la fois de blagues et de chansons de débauche. Rabelais est considéré comme l'un des grands écrivains de la littérature mondiale et parmi les créateurs de l'écriture européenne moderne. Il a également publié sous les noms Alcofribas Nasier et Séraphin Calobarsy.
People historically regarded this major Renaissance doctor of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes, and songs. Considered of the great of world literature, he created modern Europe. He also published under the names Alcofribas Nasier and Séraphin Calobarsy.
François Rabelais était un des grand écrivains de la Renaissance française, médecin et humaniste. Il a toujours été considéré comme un écrivain de fantaisie, de satire, de grotesque et à la fois de blagues et de chansons de débauche. Rabelais est considéré comme l'un des grands écrivains de la littérature mondiale et parmi les créateurs de l'écriture européenne moderne. Il a également publié sous les noms Alcofribas Nasier et Séraphin Calobarsy.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 16, 2010
This book (along with Don Quixote) is pretty much the foundation of the modern novel. It's lewd, it's violent, it's usually hilarious. Giving any less than five stars to this is like giving a bad review to air or shelter.
January 10, 2013
Some writers leave such a mark on the world that their names become adjectivied, e.g. Orwellian, Joycean, Wellsian, Vernean, Lovecraftian, Sadean, etc. One of those writers was Francois Rabelais, a French Renaissance satirist and fabulist who lived from about 1494 until 1553. He was, at various times, a monk (Franciscan and then Dominican), a doctor and a classical scholar. His writing, in his lifetime, was both very popular in France and very controversial. He was labelled a heretic at a time when people were being burned for it, but, for a time, he had the patronage of the King to allow him to keep writing.
I decided I should read the writings of Rabelais after having found myself referring to some of my own writing as Rabelaisian, by which I meant that it was irreverent, bawdy and life-affirming. It has always been my way to start talking about things first and then educate myself about them afterwards. And, in reading his five volume work Gargantua and Pantagruel, which relates at great length the fantastical lives, adventures and opinions of father and son giants and their motley band of heavy drinking friends, I discovered that Rabelais was indeed a man after my own heart in more ways than I had suspected.
In looking for a concise definition of the term Rabelaisian I found an excellent article by Pierre Beaudry called What Does It Mean to Be Rabelaisian? Beaudry says : To be Rabelaisian, means to be totally outrageous, raunchy, crude in every way, absolutely stubborn in matters of truth, relentless against hypocrisy, and against all forms of popular opinion; but, also, in a more profound way, it means AXIOM BUSTING.
Rabelais' magnum opus is not an easy read. While it contains many very funny and wildly imaginative incidents, conversations and poems, it also contains long bizarre lists of various kinds, lots of Latin quotes and deliberately tiresome passages of nonsense parodying the minutiae of legal battles or the ostentatious speech of pedants and pseudo-intellectuals. Apparently Rabelais took delight not only in making his scandalised readers struggle to decipher some of his references, but hiding deeply subversive messages amidst the dick and fart jokes.
Whether in his role as doctor or writer, Rabelais prescribed laughter and drinking as the best medicine. Moderate consumption of alcohol, he felt, helped his patients loosen up and let go of tension. But drinking in his writing has metaphorical significance also - the drinking in of life and of knowledge, which should be pursued with gusto. Life can't have been easy for a doctor and free-thinker in 16th century France. There were no anaesthetics or antibiotics. And heretics were being executed. In Rabelais' writing there is no shying away from the gruesome and tragic realities of life. Much of the humour is dark. But the laughter is heroic laughter, a defiance of everything that strives to crush the soul of humanity. The comic imagination is a great winnower of folly. And when folly has been destroyed, what remains is wisdom.
Would I recommend reading this book in its entirety? Probably only to those who have a touch of masochism like myself. But it is a book which lends itself to dipping into and reading individual passages. Along with the wisdom, humour and imagination, you will find the origins of still current popular expressions, e.g. "Why, every one as they like; as the good woman said when she kissed her cow." And there is also a proto-type of the gag about the man who sees a woman's vagina for the first time and thinks she has been wounded with an axe.
Sometimes we read a book written in a different era and find we have discovered a dear friend, a fellow-spirit, across the centuries. I feel that way about Rabelais. I share his love for humanity, his contempt for hypocrisy and conformism and his taste for a dirty joke. And, above all perhaps, his belief in the healthful properties of laughter. It is my test for emotional health. If we often surrender ourselves to a deep belly-laugh, and, especially, if we frequently laugh at ourselves, then we are doing O.K. A belly-laugh is an expression of generosity and tolerance, completely different from the laughter of cruelty. And if we can't laugh at ourselves it is because we take ourselves too seriously, thinking either too much of ourselves or too little.
I decided I should read the writings of Rabelais after having found myself referring to some of my own writing as Rabelaisian, by which I meant that it was irreverent, bawdy and life-affirming. It has always been my way to start talking about things first and then educate myself about them afterwards. And, in reading his five volume work Gargantua and Pantagruel, which relates at great length the fantastical lives, adventures and opinions of father and son giants and their motley band of heavy drinking friends, I discovered that Rabelais was indeed a man after my own heart in more ways than I had suspected.
In looking for a concise definition of the term Rabelaisian I found an excellent article by Pierre Beaudry called What Does It Mean to Be Rabelaisian? Beaudry says : To be Rabelaisian, means to be totally outrageous, raunchy, crude in every way, absolutely stubborn in matters of truth, relentless against hypocrisy, and against all forms of popular opinion; but, also, in a more profound way, it means AXIOM BUSTING.
Rabelais' magnum opus is not an easy read. While it contains many very funny and wildly imaginative incidents, conversations and poems, it also contains long bizarre lists of various kinds, lots of Latin quotes and deliberately tiresome passages of nonsense parodying the minutiae of legal battles or the ostentatious speech of pedants and pseudo-intellectuals. Apparently Rabelais took delight not only in making his scandalised readers struggle to decipher some of his references, but hiding deeply subversive messages amidst the dick and fart jokes.
Whether in his role as doctor or writer, Rabelais prescribed laughter and drinking as the best medicine. Moderate consumption of alcohol, he felt, helped his patients loosen up and let go of tension. But drinking in his writing has metaphorical significance also - the drinking in of life and of knowledge, which should be pursued with gusto. Life can't have been easy for a doctor and free-thinker in 16th century France. There were no anaesthetics or antibiotics. And heretics were being executed. In Rabelais' writing there is no shying away from the gruesome and tragic realities of life. Much of the humour is dark. But the laughter is heroic laughter, a defiance of everything that strives to crush the soul of humanity. The comic imagination is a great winnower of folly. And when folly has been destroyed, what remains is wisdom.
Would I recommend reading this book in its entirety? Probably only to those who have a touch of masochism like myself. But it is a book which lends itself to dipping into and reading individual passages. Along with the wisdom, humour and imagination, you will find the origins of still current popular expressions, e.g. "Why, every one as they like; as the good woman said when she kissed her cow." And there is also a proto-type of the gag about the man who sees a woman's vagina for the first time and thinks she has been wounded with an axe.
Sometimes we read a book written in a different era and find we have discovered a dear friend, a fellow-spirit, across the centuries. I feel that way about Rabelais. I share his love for humanity, his contempt for hypocrisy and conformism and his taste for a dirty joke. And, above all perhaps, his belief in the healthful properties of laughter. It is my test for emotional health. If we often surrender ourselves to a deep belly-laugh, and, especially, if we frequently laugh at ourselves, then we are doing O.K. A belly-laugh is an expression of generosity and tolerance, completely different from the laughter of cruelty. And if we can't laugh at ourselves it is because we take ourselves too seriously, thinking either too much of ourselves or too little.
September 9, 2019
This is a collection of 5 books written by Francisco Rabelais in the 16th century about the giant Gargantua and his son Pantagruel (mostly about Pantagruel's travels). It is not a fantasy book. It is a religious and social satire.
I have very mixed feelings about this book and therefore am giving it a rating of 3 (3.5). Much of the problem lies with my own ignorance. The book is full of literary, philosophical, and political references that are totally foreign to me. Of course the fact that the book(s) were written in the 1500's exasperated that as many of the references that might have been mainstream then, are obscure today.
“I am much mistaken if I did not see among them Herodotus, Pliny, Solinus, Berosus, Philostratus, Pomponius Mela, Strabo, and God knows how many other antiquaries.”
On top of that, I have a very old copy/translation (from French) version of the book. It has no copyright but was gifted to my mother by my grandfather in 1942. The coverage says simply "Faithfully translated by the Bibliophilist Society." There is a free Kindle translation ("Gargantus and Pantagruel" translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty and Peter Antony Motteux which is slightly different from my version. I switched to the Kindle version at book 5 because I could then just click on a word to see the definition (when it existed).
Another issue is the use of archaic language. I kinda love seeing how language has evolved and looking up some of these words. However, it does slow the reading of the book down quite a bit. Many words that come up as archaic in the Oxford Dictionay or Wikipedia, others don't come up at all.
“the leprous were brought in by her abstractors, spodizators, masticators, pregustics, tabachins, chachanins, neemanins, rabrebans, nercins, rozuins, nebidins, tearins, segamions, perarons, chasinins, sarins, soteins, aboth, enilins, archasdarpenins, mebins, chabourins, and other officers, for whom I want names”
Lots of humor,both sublime and sophomoric. There's no shortage of fart and feces jokes,often along the same vein as Canterbury Tales. It's interesting to see how writing has evolved. The idea of keeping examples or descriptive phrases to a maximum of three is obviously an unknown concept to Rabelais! He tries to fit in as many examples as he can think of.
"they found nine flagons set in such order as they use to rank their kyles in Gascony, of which that which was placed in the middle had under it a big, fat, great, grey, pretty, small, mouldy, little pamphlet"
Or
"islands of thieves, banditti, picaroons, robbers, ruffians, and murderers, worse than raw-head and bloody-bones, and full as honest as the senior fellows of the college of iniquity, the very outcasts of the county gaol's common-side."
Rabelais loves lists. He devotes entire pages to what Pantegruel had for breakfast or what Gargantua is wearing. It's very odd.
Anyway,it was a difficult read but I'm glad I did. I might even be persuaded to read a more modern translation of these books at some point.
I have very mixed feelings about this book and therefore am giving it a rating of 3 (3.5). Much of the problem lies with my own ignorance. The book is full of literary, philosophical, and political references that are totally foreign to me. Of course the fact that the book(s) were written in the 1500's exasperated that as many of the references that might have been mainstream then, are obscure today.
“I am much mistaken if I did not see among them Herodotus, Pliny, Solinus, Berosus, Philostratus, Pomponius Mela, Strabo, and God knows how many other antiquaries.”
On top of that, I have a very old copy/translation (from French) version of the book. It has no copyright but was gifted to my mother by my grandfather in 1942. The coverage says simply "Faithfully translated by the Bibliophilist Society." There is a free Kindle translation ("Gargantus and Pantagruel" translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty and Peter Antony Motteux which is slightly different from my version. I switched to the Kindle version at book 5 because I could then just click on a word to see the definition (when it existed).
Another issue is the use of archaic language. I kinda love seeing how language has evolved and looking up some of these words. However, it does slow the reading of the book down quite a bit. Many words that come up as archaic in the Oxford Dictionay or Wikipedia, others don't come up at all.
“the leprous were brought in by her abstractors, spodizators, masticators, pregustics, tabachins, chachanins, neemanins, rabrebans, nercins, rozuins, nebidins, tearins, segamions, perarons, chasinins, sarins, soteins, aboth, enilins, archasdarpenins, mebins, chabourins, and other officers, for whom I want names”
Lots of humor,both sublime and sophomoric. There's no shortage of fart and feces jokes,often along the same vein as Canterbury Tales. It's interesting to see how writing has evolved. The idea of keeping examples or descriptive phrases to a maximum of three is obviously an unknown concept to Rabelais! He tries to fit in as many examples as he can think of.
"they found nine flagons set in such order as they use to rank their kyles in Gascony, of which that which was placed in the middle had under it a big, fat, great, grey, pretty, small, mouldy, little pamphlet"
Or
"islands of thieves, banditti, picaroons, robbers, ruffians, and murderers, worse than raw-head and bloody-bones, and full as honest as the senior fellows of the college of iniquity, the very outcasts of the county gaol's common-side."
Rabelais loves lists. He devotes entire pages to what Pantegruel had for breakfast or what Gargantua is wearing. It's very odd.
Anyway,it was a difficult read but I'm glad I did. I might even be persuaded to read a more modern translation of these books at some point.
January 28, 2013
Even throughout my re-readings, this marvelous work of literature can often take me a while to get into. Though once back in, I can again capture Rabelais' tone; his humour; his debauchery; his piss-taking; his mentoring; his wisdom and knowledge, all resurface as I lose myself into the visceral world he creates with a depth of description still unmatched today.
Take Rabelais' advice and eat and drink your fill and do it whilst your reading. But if you do, be warned, much food and drink might just exit out your nose when he suddenly grips you by the belly and turns you topsy-turvy.
Take Rabelais' advice and eat and drink your fill and do it whilst your reading. But if you do, be warned, much food and drink might just exit out your nose when he suddenly grips you by the belly and turns you topsy-turvy.
May 16, 2019
Might be helpful to read with a historical guide to understand what this is satirizing.
November 14, 2022
My comments on Rabelais are posted in "Rereading the Classics (Rabelais)" at https://williamseaton.blogspot.com/se....
August 15, 2025
la notice et les notes sont précieuses merci pour tout
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May 4, 2013I can't remember when I started Gargantua and Pantagruel, but I couldn't make it half way through the book before I had to stop because of the excessive farting and shitting references . I think farting is just as funny as the next guy, but after a while it just gets old. Not only that, but the book was absolutely unintelligible. I'm not a great fan of nonlinear plots and this book was definitely one of those. I also failed to see any esoteric value to the book at all, except for the Abbey of Thelma reference.
August 28, 2012
Hilarious satirical nonsense.
June 5, 2014
This is one of the most celebrated titles in the history of literature.
This is a lovely edition of all five volumes of Gargantua and Pantagruel.
This is a lovely edition of all five volumes of Gargantua and Pantagruel.
January 10, 2019
Best compilation of Rabelais works.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews