Complete Works of Francois Rabelais (Centennial Book; a Wake Forest Studium Book)

Rating:
Summary: The timeless prose
Review: Francois Rabelais is one of my favourite authors, along with Dickens, Turgenieff, Montaigne and Dostoyevsky. The novel 'Gargantua and Pantagruel' is about a family of giants, and book one talks about Gargantua (the father). The second book, about the son of Gargantua, Pantagruel, is actually funnier, partly due to the situations in which Pantagruel was the 'cause of a problem' when he was a child. The book sounds like a children's book, but rest assured, for it is very difficult, especially when you're reading it in French, as I did. I think this novel is a very strong work of literature to influence the child's tastes in books and literature in general. After 'Gargantua and Pantagruel' it is easy to read such brillant works as Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe' and Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels'. Being an enterntaining book, 'Gargantua and Pantagruel' also deals with the problems of Eternity- our feelings, thoughts and disenchantments.

Rating:
Summary: Looks Good On Paper
Review: My dear pantagruelists, Donald Frame was a very learned man. His lucid but formal, mildly pedantic style was perfect for Montaigne, but it doesn't suit the good Doctor Rabelais.

Reading Frame's Rabelais = slow and tedious
Reading Rabelais in French = slow and delightful
Reading Cohen's Penguin Rabelais = quick and delightful (while still basically dependable as a translation)

Yes, if you want a crib to accompany your volumes of F.R.'s collected works in French, that would be Frame. By all means, do not send off that footnote to the scholarly journal without consulting Frame first. But if you want to read the book, Cohen's negligible and occasional mistakes don't matter--whether you hear Rabelais's voice and ride apace on his wings of verbal fancy, that does matter.

(For what it's worth, I mention J.M. Cohen as an alternative, rather than Burton Raffel or Andrew Brown, because of how bold these other translators, from what I've seen, have been in "freshening up" Rabelais. I figure that, if you were even mildly tempted to buy Frame's scrupulous tome, then Cohen is preferable for his relative willingness to let the chaotically learned Medieval and Renaissance period detritus reach the English reader's ears.)