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Summary: "Gargantua and Pantagruel"
Review: "Gargantua and Pantagruel"
A 16th-century medical doctor and Catholic monk, François Rabelais spent decades writing a series of five books, collectively known as "Gargantua and Pantagruel," that became wildly popular for their dark and bawdy humor. To this day, the massive tome still ruffles religious feathers. The current edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia calls Rabelais "a revolutionary who attacked all the past, scholasticism, the monks; his religion is scarcely more than that of a spiritually-minded pagan.... His vocabulary is rich and picturesque, but licentious and filthy."
Sex, drinking, utopian ideals, and heretical philosophy populate this fantastical saga that follows the adventures of a giant and his son. What's even more intriguing are the multitude of hidden messages, Gnostic insights, alchemical secrets, and herbal obsessions (e.g., cannabis) that bubble far beneath the surface of these tall tales.
Hey, the book is dated, no doubt. But it can still get the Church's metaphorical cloisters all bundled up in a ruffle... so don't let the Pope catch ya readin' it, son.
(This review is being posted on Amazon under the legal approval of a Creative Commons License -- material can be used elsewhere so long as the original author and website are credited. Author: Lucas Brachish. Website: celebritycola.blogspot.com)
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Summary: precursor of de Sade
Review: I decided to read this after noting Henry Miller's enthusiasm for the book in The Tropic of Cancer (I figured if Miller liked it, it must be good). I was sorely disappointed. I have nothing against bawdy or scatological humor on principle, but I found Rabelais simply boring, tasteless, and completely bereft of genuine humor. This is the sort of thing that gets guffaws from 12-year old boys who think that simply using foul language makes them endlessly witty. If you want early novelists with a tendency toward the bawdy and/or scatological, I recommend Boccaccio, Cervantes and Sterne. And if you absolutely, positively must wallow in a cesspool of disgusting smut, go to the master - the Marquis de Sade.
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Summary: Broad, Common, Vulgar, Crass and Unspeakably Funny!
Review: If you thought the vulgar humor in such films as PORKY'S and AMERICAN PIE was a modern phenomena, you're in for a shock: both are fairly mild in comparison with the works of Rabelais, which plumb the depths of human crassness in full Renaissance style. Writing before European authors had codified the novel as a form, Rabelais presents a series of very episodic tales about the adventures of the giant Gargantua, his son Pantagruel, and Pantagruel's trickster friend Panurge--and the three vomit, belch, fart, and engage in a number of equally distasteful bodily functions across page after page in some of the funniest writings found in the whole of Western literature.But unlike contemporary bad-taste comedy, Rabelais is hardly willing to let his reader go with just a laugh. There is sharp intelligence behind his naughty laughter--and he directs his considerable wit at everything from education to fashionable society in page after page of unspeakably hilarious incident. (My own favorite passage concerns the trick Panurge plays upon the fashionable, church-going lady who spurns his attentions; it never fails to throw me into near-hysterical laughter.) Vividly written and extremely memorable, GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL is the sort of stuff they don't teach in highschool... and more's the pity: it would probably convert more students to the classics than all the Romantics combined. Truly serious scholars should, of course, compare various translations, but the Cohen translation will do the trick for the more casual reader. Strongly recommended.
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Summary: VOMITUS PRIMUS!
Review: In a graduate school discussion of Rabelais with my advisor, the profusion of vomit, not to mention other corporeal effusions, in Rabelais "came up." I suggested the term "Wretch Lit" as a general epithet for literature of this nature, including Celine, Bukowski, P. Roth, et al. Anyway, Rabelais is more than just good puking fun, and much more than the root of a grand adjective; he is an artist of the highest calibre. In the 16th century, when Europeans were just beginning to carve out long fiction as a form*, a development that would culminate in the 19th century when the novel became the dominant mode of belles lettres, Francois Rabelais led the French fictionist camp. His stories, while not exactly novels by today's reckoning**, are brilliant examples of longer fiction. His works are lusty, vivid, implausible, riotously funny, carnal, explicit, inventive, sensual and alive. He is a remarkably deft satirist and his major works--"Gargantua" and "Pantagruel"--give us a poignant, if sidelong, glimpse into the climate of his day. The Everyman series is always good, and this is certainly no exception. Anyone who wants to understand, and to appreciate, the modern novel must begin with its antecedents--and Rabelais has a substantial place in this. *Of course, the "novel," or something remarkably close to it, had long since flourished elsewhere, Japan and Egypt most notably. Lady Murasaki Shikibu, for example, an 11th-century writer, had developed the form further than Europeans would until the mid-19th century (misogynists and Eurocentrists beware!). Her "Tale of Genji" is a sophisticated story of Imperial Court society, a work of "psychological realism" that had no equal in Europe until Flaubert. **Because they lack coherent linear plot, a classical "dramatic arc," and traditional character development, we don't call them novels, per se. Of course, postmodern novels don't have these elements either, quite often, yet we insist they are novels as such. Funny. Of course, scholars do love categories, especially when they fit neatly into a chronological schema. So, because Lawrence Sterne and Rabelais are from "the past," we can't call them postmodern, and we can't look at their writings as novels--they just aren't polished enough....
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Summary: A most healthy, wise, gallant and happy type of a story!
Review: Monsieur Rabelais' wit, wisdom and sophistication are of the highest order. His faith in a certain type of physical and mental education gives us evidence of the basic goodness and perfectibility of man. There is no other novel that gave me so much mirth ,enlightenment, and seriousness about learning . With the development of "bonhommie", the author says, one can attain well-being. "DO AS THOU WILT because men that are free, of gentle birth, well bred and at home in civilized company possess a natural instinct that inclines them to virtue and saves them from vice. This instinct they name their honor." This is truly a world masterpiece. Merci beaucoup Mr. Rabelais!
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Summary: so clever? so what...
Review: Rabelais is much heralded for his skewering of the rich and powerful. Frankly he does not measure up to Thomas More, Machiavelli, Erasmus or Castiglione or their writings. Some may find his works clever or cute, they may certainly rattle pre-conceptions of the stiffness of the era. As for me, it lacked wit and was mostly just crude, which some find to be groundbreaking but in fact crudeness has existed through out the ages.
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Summary: It's all about the Bottle...
Review: Some years ago I read a quote by Rabelais -- something about whether a chimera bombinating in a vacuum could devour second intentions -- and I sensed that his humor might appeal to me. "Gargantua and Pantagruel," his literary landmark and the source of that quote, is a virtual encyclopedia of Renaissance satire that contrives a heroic epic as a backdrop for a comprehensive commentary of medieval and classical history and mythology. The story, which concerns the adventures of the giant Gargantua, his son Pantagruel, and Pantagruel's friend Panurge, is completely silly; just scan the chapter titles in the table of contents for an indication. Silly, but not stupid: Rabelais is a serious scholar who has written a book that is not intended to be taken seriously. An epicure with an insatiable appetite for learning and a fascination with bodily functions, he believes that wine, scatology, and the pursuit of knowledge are inseparable. The book is all codpieces, urination, defecation, and flatulence at the service of satirizing the pedantry in the medical, legal, ecclesiastical, and academic professions as they existed in the sixteenth century. It should be noted that Rabelais's satire is generally playful and cheerful rather than bitter and mean-spirited, so the book's tone is always light even if its content is very erudite. The plot, such as it is, is episodic rather than unified. Gargantua defends his country, Utopia, from invasion by King Picrochole of Lerne, in a war started by an argument between Utopian shepherds and Lernean cake-bakers; Pantagruel and Panurge then defend Utopia from invasion by Anarch, King of the Dipsodes; Panurge conducts inquiries among a variety of experts on whether or not he should get married, which leads to several discussions about cuckoldry, impotence, and cuckoldry as a consequence of impotence; and Pantagruel and Panurge, along with their monkish friend Friar John and several cohorts, embark on a sea voyage to consult the oracle of the Temple of the Bottle, visiting many strange islands and encountering many bizarre creatures along the way. As mentioned, it is of course all nonsense, but it is a definite precursor to the more farcical works of Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, Lewis Carroll, and James Joyce, and for that reason it has significant value as a ribald curiosity.
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Summary: Multi-faceted laugh-a-minute and dead serious
Review: The praisers of Rabelais and this particular product he created have already expressed a lot of the truths to be found here, the exquisite style, the masterly satire. All they say is true and would be reason enough to read Gargantuan and Pentagruel. I won't repeat those laurels to affirm them. Instead, I'll suggest another reason a segment of readers might find Rabelais interesting. Followers of the Thelemic 'traditon' created by Aleister Crowley during the early 1900s might be surprised to discover Crowley's claims to having channeled the doctrine from Horus in Cairo in 1910, were preceded by Rabelais several centuries earlier. Rabelais creats an imaginary monastary and sect of monks he names, "Thelema", where a sign above the entry reads, "DO AS YOU WILL". Sound familiar? Buy this book and read on. But if you do so as an admirer of Crowley's channeling be prepared to experience a deflating of some of your balloons and butchering of a sacred cow for the barbeque.
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Summary: SIDE-SPLITTINGLY FUNNY READ
Review: This book is Rabelais at his best. Yes, the humor is at times crude and vulgar. Yes, the more delicate reader may find it disgusting and idiotic, but if this isn't one of the most clever books ever written, I'll be a monkey's uncle! Not unlike Robertson Davies, who mentions our potty-mouthed friend many times in his book "The Rebel Angels", Rabelais takes bathroom humour to a level you probably never thought it could reach: high comedy. I highly recommend it!
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Summary: A Book For Those Who Love Bawdy and Bathroom Humor
Review: This book is the best one I have ever read for using sexual and execretory references for effective satire. The optimal reader is probably a boy aged 8-13 who loves to explore the world from this perspective already. Older readers will enjoy the social commentary as well, but may not revel in the means of the commentary unless they like extensive references to bodily functions. The use of the humor in this book is like slapstick is to comedy, its most outrageous and least restrained form. No one can stay grumpy while reading this book. It may be the only literary solution for depression ever developed. Obviously, if you can read French, it is even better in the original. Many people will choose not to read this book because of the earthy nature of the language. That is probably a mistake, because those who make that choice are suffering from the unattractiveness stall, not seeing the swan in the ugly duckling. Earthy humor can be a great way to communicate, in the appropriate circumstances. You owe it to yourself to learn how a master, Rabelais, does it. As a tip to the reader who has more sensitive tastes, I suggest you skip through to the end of sections that are bothering you. The very next section may well be one that leaves you in uncontrolled laughter, irresistibly lightening your mood. Have a great laugh!
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