The histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel / Fran�ois Rabelais, translated and with an introduction by J.M. Cohen

Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976. Reprint Penguin Edition. Softcover. Very good paperback copy; edges somewhat dust-dulled and nicked. Remains quite well-preserved overall. Physical description: 713 pages 18 cm. Summary: The dazzling and exuberant moral stories of Rabelais (c. 1471-1553) expose human follies with their mischievous and often obscene humor, while intertwining the realistic with carnivalsque fantasy to make us look afresh at the world. Gargantua depicts a young giant, reduced to laughable insanity by an education at the hands of paternal ignorance, old crones and syphilitic professors, who is rescued and turned into a cultured Christian knight. And in Pantagruel and its three sequels, Rabelais parodied tall tales of chivalry and satirized the law, theology and academia to portray the bookish son of Gargantua who becomes a Renaissance Socrates, divinely guided in his wisdom, and his idiotic, self-loving companion Panurge. Subjects: Rabelais, Fran�ois. 1500-1599. Giants; Fiction. French fiction 16th century. Wit and Humor as Topic. Caricatures as Topic. Humanism. Giants. French fiction. Fiction in French 16th century English texts. Novels French literature. Historical Novels. Rabelais, Fran�ois, ca. 1490-1553 French literature, 1500-1600 Collected works in translation. Penguin classics.