Gargantua (Folio Ser. : No.773) - Softcover

Rabelais, Francois

Softcover

ISBN 10: 2070367738 ISBN 13: 9782070367733

Publisher: Editions Flammarion, 1973

Synopsis

Gargantua is born into a long line of eminent giants, and his birth - through his mother's ear, after an overindulgence in tripes - recalls the fabled nativities of the gods of old. Such an auspicious beginning can only herald an equally auspicious life, and it is a life we are led through in remarkable detail, from his early show of genius, by the invention of the best of all possible arse-wipes, through his wide-ranging education, to his adult life and adventures.

About this title

Review

'In his playful, pun-packed translation...with its talk of ''todgers'' and ''bumguts'', Andrew Brown, like Urquhart before him, is eager to communicate the riotous promiscuity - the ''boozy babble and idle gossip'' - of the stories. He borrows from a multitude of sources - Shakespeare, Chaucer and what in parts reads like a scatological P.G. Wodehouse...to create a wholly credible, modern, reinvigorated Rabelais who still jumps off the page after more than 450 years.' --Times Literary Supplement

From the Author

Reading Gargantua today, it’s possible to see that Rabelais is the begetter of the picaresque novel. Like Cervantes, he is in tune with the unexpected. Nothing seems pre-ordained or designed to a plan – the storyteller (and Rabelais is a consummate storyteller and anecdotist of the most buttonholing kind) is free to go where he wishes, taking his characters with him. The method, such as it is, ensures continous surprise, and surprise is of the essence in such loose-limbed art. You feel, as you read, that Rabelais is delighting himself with his own conceits, but not indulgently so. He’s a satirist, too, and satire is the expression of contempt for the status quo. Rabelais loved, and was intrigued by, his fellow man, but there are aspects of authority that have to be ridiculed. And not just authority, since everyday meanness – financial as well as spiritual – has to be mocked. - From the Foreword by Paul Bailey

Edition details

• Publisher: Editions Flammarion
• Publication date: 1973
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 2070367738
• ISBN 13: 9782070367733
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback