Gargantua and Pantagruel

The Five Books of the Lives and Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel, often shortened to Gargantua and Pantagruel or the Cinq Livres, is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It tells the adventures of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. The work is written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein, features much erudition, vulgarity, and wordplay, and is regularly compared with the works of William Shakespeare and James Joyce. Rabelais was a polyglot, and the work introduced "a great number of new and difficult words ... into the French language".
The work was stigmatised as obscene by the censors of the italic=no. In a social climate of increasing religious oppression in the lead up to the French Wars of Religion, contemporaries treated it with suspicion and avoided mentioning it.
The characters of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel were not created by Rabelais but inspired by various folk tales which had been collated in the early sixteenth century into five different works, collectively referred to as the Gargantuan Chronicles, the most popular of which, Les Grandes et Inestimables Cronicques du grant et enorme geant Gargantua, Rabelais references in his prologue.
It is the origin of the word, meaning "buffoonery or coarse humor with a satirical or serious purpose"; and also, meaning "enormous".

Initial publication

The novels were written progressively without a preliminary plan.

Vol.	Short title	Full title	English title	Published
1	Pantagruel	Les horribles et épouvantables faits et prouesses du très renommé Pantagruel Roi des Dipsodes, fils du Grand Géant Gargantua	The Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of the Very Renowned Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes, Son of the Great Giant Gargantua
2	Gargantua	La vie très horrifique du grand Gargantua, père de Pantagruel	The Very Horrific Life of Great Gargantua, Father of Pantagruel	1534
3	The Third Book of Pantagruel	Le tiers livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel	The Third Book of the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Good Pantagruel	1546
4	The Fourth Book of Pantagruel	Le quart livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel	The Fourth Book of the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Good Pantagruel	1552
5	The Fifth Book of Pantagruel	Le cinquiesme et dernier livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel	The Fifth and Last Book of the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Good Pantagruel

Synopsis

''Pantagruel''

The full modern English title for the work commonly known as Pantagruel is The Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of the Very Renowned Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes, Son of the Great Giant Gargantua and in French, Les horribles et épouvantables faits et prouesses du très renommé Pantagruel Roi des Dipsodes, fils du Grand Géant Gargantua. The original title of the work was Pantagruel roy des dipsodes restitué à son naturel avec ses faictz et prouesses espoventables. Although most modern editions of Rabelais' work place Pantagruel as the second volume of a series, it was actually published first, around 1532 under the pen name "Alcofribas Nasier", an anagram of François Rabelais.
The narrative begins with the origin of giants; Pantagruel's particular genealogy; and his birth. His childhood is briefly covered, before his father sends him away to the universities. He acquires a great reputation. On receiving a letter with news that his father has been translated to Fairyland by Morgan le Fay, and that the Dipsodes, hearing of it, have invaded his land and are besieging a city, Pantagruel and his companions depart.
Through subterfuge, might, and urine, the besieged city is relieved, and their residents are invited to invade the Dipsodes, who mostly surrender to Pantagruel as he and his army approach their towns. During a downpour, Pantagruel shelters his army with his tongue, and the narrator travels into Pantagruel's mouth. He returns some months later and learns that the hostilities are over.

''Gargantua''

After the success of Pantagruel, Rabelais revisited and revised his source material, producing an improved narrative of the life and deeds of Pantagruel's father: The Very Horrific Life of Great Gargantua, Father of Pantagruel, commonly known as Gargantua.
The narrative begins with Gargantua's birth and childhood. He impresses his father with his intelligence, and is entrusted to a tutor. This education renders him a great fool, and he is later sent to Paris with a new tutor.
After Gargantua's reeducation, the narrator turns to some bakers from a neighbouring land who are transporting some fouaces. Some shepherds politely ask these bakers to sell them some of the said fouaces, which request escalates into war.
Gargantua is summoned, while Grandgousier seeks peace. The enemy king is not interested in peace, so Grandgousier reluctantly prepares for violence. Gargantua leads a well-orchestrated assault, and defeats the enemy.

''The Third Book''

In The Third Book of Pantagruel, Rabelais picks up where Pantagruel ended, continuing in the form of a dialogue.
Pantagruel and Panurge discuss the latter's profligacy, and Pantagruel determines to pay his debts for him. Panurge, out of debt, becomes interested in marriage, and wants advice.
A multitude of counsels and prognostications are met with, and repeatedly rejected by Panurge, until he wants to consult the Divine Bottle.
Preparations for a voyage thereto are made.

''The Fourth Book''

In The Fourth Book of Pantagruel, Rabelais picks up where The Third Book ended, with Pantagruel and companions putting to sea for their voyage toward the Divine Bottle, Bacbuc
They sail onward, passing, or landing at, places of interest, until they meet a storm, which they endure, until they can land again.
Having returned to sea, they kill a sea-monster, and drag that ashore, where they are attacked by Chitterlings. Fierce culinary combat ensues, but is peaceably resolved, having been interrupted by a flying pig-monster.
Again, they continue their voyage, passing, or landing at, places of interest, until the book ends, with the ships firing a salute, and Panurge soiling himself.

''The Fifth Book''

The Fifth Book of Pantagruel was published posthumously around 1564, and chronicles the further journeyings of Pantagruel and his friends.
At Ringing Island, the company find birds living in the same hierarchy as the Catholic Church. On Tool Island, the people are so fat they slit their skin to allow the fat to puff out. At the next island they are imprisoned by Furred Law-Cats, and escape only by answering a riddle. Nearby, they find an island of lawyers who nourish themselves on protracted court cases. In the Queendom of Whims, they uncomprehendingly watch a living-figure chess match with the miracle-working and prolix Queen Quintessence.
Passing by the abbey of the sexually prolific Semiquavers, and the Elephants and monstrous Hearsay of Satin Island, they come to the realms of darkness. Led by a guide from Lanternland, they go deep below the earth to the oracle of Bacbuc. After much admiring of the architecture and many religious ceremonies, they come to the sacred bottle itself. It utters the one word "trinc". After drinking liquid text from a book of interpretation, Panurge concludes wine inspires him to right action, and he forthwith vows to marry as quickly and as often as possible.

Analysis

Authorship of The Fifth Book

The authenticity of The Fifth Book has been doubted since it first appeared in 1564. Both during and after Rabelais' life, books that he did not write were published in his name. The Fifth Book of Pantagruel that usually accompanies the other, certainly genuine, books, is not the only Fifth Book of Pantagruel known to have existed. At least one pseudo-Rabelaisian book was merely subsumed by this Fifth Book that accompanies Rabelais' certain books. It includes much "flatly borrowed and dull material".
Some people believe the book was based on some of Rabelais' papers; some believe that it has "nothing to do with Rabelais". M. A. Screech is of this latter opinion, and, introducing his translation, he bemoans that "ome read back into the Four books the often cryptic meanings they find in the Fifth". Donald M. Frame is of the opinion that, when Rabelais died, he "probably left some materials on where to go on from Book 4", and that somebody, "after some adding and padding", assembled the book that he does not find "either clearly or largely authentic". Frame is "taken with" Mireille Huchon's work in "Rabelais Grammairien", which he cites in support of his opinion. J. M. Cohen, in his Introduction to a Penguin Classics edition, indicates that chapters 17–48 were so out-of-character as to be seemingly written by another person, with the Fifth Book "clumsily patched together by an unskilful editor."

Bakhtin's analysis of Rabelais

's book Rabelais and His World explores Gargantua and Pantagruel and is considered a classic of Renaissance studies. Bakhtin declares that for centuries Rabelais' book had been misunderstood. Throughout Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin attempts two things. First, to recover sections of Gargantua and Pantagruel that in the past were either ignored or suppressed. Secondly, to conduct an analysis of the Renaissance social system in order to discover the balance between language that was permitted and language which was not.
Through this analysis, Bakhtin pinpoints two important subtexts in Rabelais' work: the first is carnivalesque which Bakhtin describes as a social institution, and the second is grotesque realism, which is defined as a literary mode. Thus, in Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin studies the interaction between the social and the literary, as well as the meaning of the body.
Bakhtin explains that carnival in Rabelais' work and age is associated with the collectivity, for those attending a carnival do not merely constitute a crowd. Rather the people are seen as a whole, organized in a way that defies socioeconomic and political organization. According to Bakhtin, "ll were considered equal during carnival. Here, in the town square, a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among people who were usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age".
At carnival time, the unique sense of time and space causes the individual to feel he is a part of the collectivity, at which point he ceases to be himself. It is at this point that, through costume and mask, an individual exchanges bodies and is renewed. At the same time there arises a heightened awareness of one's sensual, material, bodily unity and community.
Bakhtin says also that in Rabelais the notion of carnival is connected with that of the grotesque. The collectivity partaking in the carnival is aware of its unity in time as well as its historic immortality associated with its continual death and renewal. According to Bakhtin, the body is in need of a type of clock if it is to be aware of its timelessness. The grotesque is the term used by Bakhtin to describe the emphasis of bodily changes through eating, evacuation, and sex: Rabelais uses it as a measuring device.