Gargantua and Pantagruel

Rabelais’s riotous masterpiece recounts the outrageous adventures of the giants Gargantua and his son Pantagruel in a torrent of bawdy comedy, fantastical invention, learned parody, and gleeful excess. Beneath the giant-sized feasting, drinking, and absurdity lies a sharp Renaissance satire of scholasticism, the church, and every human pretension, animated by an irrepressible love of life and learning. Enormous, chaotic, and endlessly inventive, it gave the language the word ‘Rabelaisian’ for its earthy exuberance. A landmark of world literature and one of the funniest books ever written, Gargantua and Pantagruel celebrates freedom, knowledge, and the boundless comic energy of the human spirit.