Гаргантюа и Пантагрюэль: Сатирические романы Франсуа Рабле

16th century novels by François Rabelais

The Five Books of the Lives and Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel , often shortened to Gargantua and Pantagruel or the Cinq Livres (Five Books), is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It tells the adventures of two giants, Gargantua (/g//ɑːr/'/g//æ//n//tj//u//ə/ garGANtewə, ɡaʁɡɑ̃tɥa) and his son Pantagruel (/p//æ//n/'/t//æ//g//r//u//ɛ//l//, // //əl//, /,/p//æ//n//t//ə/'/g//r//uː//ə//l/ panTAGrooel, əl, PANtəGROOəl, pɑ̃taɡʁyɛl). 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. "Pantagruelism", a form of stoicism, developed and applied throughout, is (among other things) "a certain gaiety of spirit confected in disdain for fortuitous things" .

The novels were written progressively without a preliminary plan. Vol. Short title Full title English title Published 1 PantagruelLes horribles et épouvantables faits et prouesses du très renommé Pantagruel Roi des Dipsodes, fils du Grand Géant GargantuaThe Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of the Very Renowned Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes, Son of the Great Giant Gargantuac. 1532 2 GargantuaLa vie très horrifique du grand Gargantua, père de PantagruelThe Very Horrific Life of Great Gargantua, Father of Pantagruel1534 3 The Third Book of PantagruelLe tiers livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon PantagruelThe Third Book of the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Good Pantagruel1546 4 The Fourth Book of PantagruelLe quart livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon PantagruelThe Fourth Book of the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Good Pantagruel1552 5 The Fifth Book of PantagruelLe cinquiesme et dernier livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon PantagruelThe Fifth and Last Book of the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Good Pantagruelc. 1564

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", (Rabelais died in 1553.) Both during and after Rabelais' life, books that he did not write were published in his name. 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", 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."

Mikhail Bakhtin'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. According to Bakhtin, "[A]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.

The five books of Gargantua and Pantagruel often open with Gargantua, which itself opens with Socrates, in The Symposium, being likened to Sileni. Sileni, as Rabelais informs the reader, were little boxes "painted on the outside with merry frivolous pictures" but used to store items of high value. In Socrates, and particularly in The Symposium, Rabelais found a person who exemplified many paradoxes, and provided a precedent for his "own brand of serious play". In these opening pages of Gargantua, Rabelais exhorts the reader "to disregard the ludicrous surface and seek out the hidden wisdom of his book"; and Gargantua and Pantagruel covers "the entire satirical spectrum". Its "combination of diverse satirical traditions" The full extent of Rabelais' influence is complicated by the known existence of a chapbook, probably called The History of Gargantua, translated around 1567; and the Songes drolatiques Pantagruel (1565), ascribed to Rabelais, and used by Inigo Jones. This complication manifests itself, for example, in Shakespeare's As You Like It, where "Gargantua's mouth" is mentioned; but evidence that Shakespeare read Rabelais is only "suggestive".

The work was first translated into English by Thomas Urquhart (the first three books) and Peter Anthony Motteux (the fourth and fifth) in the late seventeenth century. Terence Cave, in an introduction to an Everyman's Library edition, notes that both adapted the anti Catholic satire. Moreover,
<blockquote>The translation is also extremely free. Urquhart's rendering of the first three books is half as long again as the original. Many of the additions spring from a cheerful espousal of Rabelais's copious style. [ ] Le Motteux is a little more restrained, but he too makes no bones about adding material of his own. [ ] It is a literary work in its own right. Donald M. Frame, with his own translation, says he finds "Sir Thomas Urquhart [ ] savory and picturesque but too much Urquhart and at times too little R". The translation has been used for many editions, including that of Britannica's Great Books of the Western World. From The Third Book, Chapter Seven: Copsbody, this is not the Carpet whereon my Treasurer shall be allowed to play false in his Accompts with me, by setting down an X for an V, or an L for an S; for in that case, should I make a hail of Fisti cuffs to fly into his face.

William Francis Smith (1842–1919) made a translation in 1893, trying to match Rabelais' sentence forms exactly, which renders the English obscure in places. For example, the convent prior exclaims against Friar John when the latter bursts into the chapel,
What will this drunken Fellow do here? Let one take me him to prison. Thus to disturb divine Service! Smith's version includes copious notes. Donald M. Frame, with his own translation, says that Smith "was an excellent scholar; but he shuns R's obscenities and lacks his raciness".

Penguin published a translation by M. A. Screech in 2006 which incorporates textual variants; and brief notes on sources, puns, and allusions. In a translator's note, he says: "My aim here for Rabelais (as for my Penguin Montaigne) is to turn him loyally into readable and enjoyable English." From The Third Book, Chapter Seven: Crikey. My accountant had better not play about on my bureau, stretching esses into efs sous into francs! Otherwise blows from my fist would trot all over his dial!

An example of the giants' shift in body size, above where people are the size of Pantagruel's foot, and below where Gargantua is under twice the height of a human. The most famous and reproduced illustrations for Gargantua and Pantagruel were done by French artist Gustave Doré and published in 1854. Over 400 additional drawings were done by Doré for the 1873 second edition of the book. An edition published in 1904 was illustrated by W. Heath Robinson. Another set of illustrations was created by French artist Joseph Hémard and published in 1922.