The story
In 1532 a physician and former monk named Francois Rabelais published Pantagruel in Lyon, under the anagram pseudonym Alcofribas Nasier. It tells the story of a giant prince, his education and his adventures, and it was followed by Gargantua (1534 or 1535), which tells of Pantagruel's father. Three more books appeared over the following decades, and together the five make up Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Rabelais wrote in French rather than Latin, in a country where printing presses in Lyon were turning out cheap popular books. He drew on medieval giant stories and on the humanist learning of the Renaissance, then used the comedy to mock monks, lawyers, theologians and the Sorbonne. The Sorbonne condemned the books, and Rabelais needed powerful protectors to stay safe. His coined words, long lists and grotesque humor gave English the adjective Rabelaisian, and his mix of learning and laughter shaped later satirists such as Swift and Sterne.
Why it mattered
- Rabelais showed that a long comic prose fiction in the vernacular could carry serious ideas, a path later followed by Cervantes in Don Quixote.
- His Abbey of Theleme, whose only rule is 'do what you will', became a famous image of humanist freedom.
- The mocking, carnival tone of the books, studied by Mikhail Bakhtin in the twentieth century, became a key idea in literary theory.
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