The Gargantua and Pantagruel reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Gargantua and Pantagruel

Gargantua and Pantagruel is a connected series of five books written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. The first volume was published around 1532; the fifth was published posthumously around 1564 and some consider its attribution to Rabelais debatable. It is the story of two giants, a father (Gargantua) and his son (Pantagruel) and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein.

The introduction to the series runs:

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.

The series in the original French is entitled La Vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel. A widely available English translation is Five Books of the Lives, Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Gargantua and Pantagruel, translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Peter Antony Motteux.

External link

• Online edition illustrated by Gustave Dore

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