La vie tres horrifique du grand Gargantua, père de Pantagruel jadis composée par M. Alcofribas abstracteur de quinte essence. Livre plein de Pantagruelisme according to 's 1542 edition, or simply Gargantua, is the second novel by François Rabelais, published in 1534 or 1535.
Similar in structure to Pantagruel (1532), but written in a more complex style, it recounts the years of apprenticeship and the warlike exploits of the giant Gargantua. A plea for a humanist culture against the ponderousness of a rigid Sorbonnard education, Gargantua is also a novel full of verve, lexical richness, and often crude writing.
Rabelais published Gargantua under the same pseudonym as Pantagruel: Alcofribas Nasier (an anagram of François Rabelais), "abstractor of quinte essence".
Summary
Prologue The novel opens with an appeal to the reader to be benevolent, announcing the comic nature of the work. This exhortation was prompted by the hostility of ecclesiastical authorities towards Rabelais after the publication of Pantagruel, and more generally towards evangelicals in general. Using paradox, the narrator Alcofribas first urges us not to rely on the comic dimension of the story, but to interpret it in a higher sense, and warns against allegorical readings.
The prologue can be read as an invitation to a plural, ambivalent, and open reading of the work or as an illustration of the rhetorical device of captatio benevolentiae, unambiguously inviting the reader to seek a univocal meaning behind the folly and obscurity of the text.
A fun-loving, humanist youth
Genealogy, birth, first name The narrator traces Gargantua's genealogy via an abalone-bark manuscript found by a peasant. As with Pantagruel, the tendency of nobles to invent prestigious ancestors for themselves, or of historians to trace royal lineages back to the earliest times, is mocked: “Et pour vous donner à entendre moy qui parle, je cuyde que soye descendu de quelque riche roy ou prince au temps jadis”. Rabelais' target here is Lemaire de Belges, who asserts in his Chroniques that the Franks are descended from the Trojans.
In the second chapter, a poem entitled Les franfreluches antidotées appears as a fragmentary and obscure text added at the end of the fictitious manuscript, which the narrator claims to have supplied out of “reverence for antiquaille”. This chapter still resists interpretation, despite its obvious references to the political news of the time. Barely comprehensible stanzas refer to the Diet of Nuremberg, the repression of heretics, or the Peace of the Ladies, with Marguerite of Austria, Charles V's aunt, pejoratively referred to as Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons.
Gargantua was born, after an eleven-month pregnancy, of the union of Grangousier and Gargamelle, daughter of the king of the Parpaillons, during a sumptuous banquet at which the guests made incoherent remarks. Gargantua is born strangely. After Gargamelle eats too much tripe, she is given an astringent that causes Gargantua to be born through his left ear, enabling Rabelais to describe Gargantua's entire journey through his mother's body. He then immediately calls for a drink. This obstetrical fiction, which blends technical medical vocabulary (“cotyledons of the womb”) and trivial expressions, plays with the scientific knowledge of the time, with the abundant discharge of the birth announcing a risk of miscarriage. It also evokes a popular legend according to which Jesus Christ came out of his mother's ear upon hearing the words of the angel Gabriel. His father, on discovering his son crying out for a drink, exclaims: “How big you are! This is why the child is christened “Gargantua”. It took the milk of no less than 17,913 cows to feed him.
The description of the giant's clothing, with its excessive and sometimes outrageous character, makes a mockery of the epic motif of the hero's equipment. It dwells on the absurd detail of a fly, at the time a pocket attached to the top of the boots. Described as a cornucopia and set with emeralds, the symbol of Venus according to Pierio Valeriano Bolzano, celebrates reproductive power. Likewise, the hat's feather refers to Christian charity. Behind the profusion and materials required for the giant's attire, the ornament represents a set of humanist and religious ideals. Gargantua is dressed in white and blue, the two colors of his father's coat of arms. The narrator is polemical about the symbolism of colors since ancient times. He asserts that white symbolizes joy and blue celestial realities.
Childhood and education
A misguided intelligence
From the age of three to five, Gargantua knows no restraint: he drinks, eats, sleeps, chases butterflies, and rolls in garbage as he pleases. He is given a wooden horse to make him a good rider, and when the Seigneur de Painensac asks him where the stable is, he takes him to his room. He shows him the mounts he has made, multiplying the puns. His quick wit astonishes his father, back from battle, who poetically explains in a “propos torcheculatif” composed of epigrams and a scatological rondeau, how he discovered the best possible torchecul after testing numerous accessories, plants, and animals. Gargantua concludes his comparison of toilet paper by saying that it's “an oyzon bien dumeté, pourveu qu'on luy tienne la teste entre les jambes”.
Gargantua's wild behavior, with its unbridled instincts, illustrates in part Erasmus's ideas, which encourage people to not neglect the education of small children. Nevertheless, it also reflects Rabelais' amused wonder at the human body.
With his son's lack of education leading him astray, Grandgousier decides to entrust him to a tutor, a renowned sophist named . To teach him literature, Holoferne teaches him to recite scholastic texts by heart, forwards, and backward. The formalism and insignificance of Modist grammar are mocked. Stricken with the pox, the preceptor dies and is replaced by an equally incompetent teacher, Jobelin Bridé. The king realizes that Gargantua is becoming a fool, and decides to give him a new teacher.
Sophists and sorbonics Noticing his son's apathy, Grandgousier complains to Don Philippe des Marays Viceroy de Papeligosse, who recommends a new humanist tutor named Ponocrates. As proof of his talent, he introduces him to one of his pupils, Eudémon, who declaims a eulogy of Gargantua with ease, in perfect Latin and respecting the rules of rhetoric.
At the same time, Grandgousier receives a gift of an enormous mare from the King of Numidia (an image borrowed from medieval folklore and present in the Grandes Chroniques). Thanks to this mare, Gargantua leaves for Paris with his tutor and his people, as he wants to see how the young men of the capital study. On the way, the mare swats away “bovine flies and freslons" with such force that she razes the entire Orléans forest, a sight before which Gargantua exclaims: "Je trouve beau ce”, a fanciful and perhaps ironic etymology for the Beauce region. The toponymic account suggests disapproval of the savage leveling rather than admiration for the landscape, as evoked by the fact that the whole country was “reduict en campagne”, i.e. transformed into farmland stripped of trees.
Gargantua arrives in Paris and immediately arouses the curiosity of the city's inhabitants. He takes refuge in the towers of Notre Dame, from where he compasses his pursuers and drowns “deux cens soixante mille, quatre cent dix et huyt. Sans les femmes et petits enfans". This deluge of urine gives rise to a new etymological facetiousness, with some swearing in anger, and others “par ris” (Paris). Gargantua takes the cathedral bells and hangs them around his mare's neck. The dean of the Sorbonne, Janotus de Bragmardo (whose surname is a guaranteed equivocation on the word braquemart, which designates both a sword and the erect male sex), is sent by the university to try to convince Gargantua to return the bells. He makes a long speech, unaware that the giant has already complied with his request. The harangue is a carnivalesque caricature of the scholastic masters and theologians of the faculty, consisting mainly of coughing fits and Latin mistakes. Eudemon and Ponocrates laugh so hard they think they'll die, like Philemon. After recovering the bells, Dean Janotus asks to be rewarded; his confreres refuse, leading to an endless lawsuit whose outcome is postponed until the Greek calends.
Humanist teaching Ponocrates observes Gargantua's behavior to understand the methods of his former tutors. The lifestyle imposed by the latter includes long periods of rest, a lack of hygiene, and a diet based on appetite, contrary to the precepts laid down by a pedagogue like Vivès. The story includes a long list of games played by the giant, such as trictrac and colin-maillard.
The preceptor decides to gently modify Gargantua's education and asks a doctor to administer ellébore d'Anticyre, reputed to cure madness, which erases his pupil's bad habits and corrupted knowledge. Gargantua receives a comprehensive, encyclopedic, and moral education, in which physical exercise and personal hygiene also play a central role. He discovers Greek and Latin authors, learns arithmetic by playing dice and cards, and practices music. The Squire Gymnast teaches him the practice of arms and cavalry; Ponocrates and Eudemon develop his taste for effort, his sense of justice, and his critical mind.
When the weather restricts outside pursuits, he pursues artistic and craft activities, such as painting and metalworking, listens to public lessons, trains in fencing, takes an interest in herbal medicine, listens to shopkeepers' gossip, and moderates his meals. This seemingly outrageous program is the measure of a giant and aims to make up for six lost decades. It is in keeping with the humanist perspective underpinned by Erasmus, in favor of a pedagogy based on the understanding and development of individual faculties. Once a month, Ponocrates and Gargantua take advantage of a sunny day to go to the country and enjoy a good meal, without forgetting to recite or compose poems.
The Picrocholine war
Outbreak of hostilities
As the shepherds of Gargantua's country ask the fouaciers of Lerné to sell them their fouaces, the latter insult them. The insult turns into a fistfight. A merchant by the name of Marquet whips Frogier, one of the shepherds. Frogier knocks him unconscious. While the fouaciers leave, the shepherds take fouaces for the usual price. The incident provokes the wrath of Picrochole, king of Lerné, whose name means “who has bitter bile”. The coming war is a satire of Charles V's expansionist aims. It takes place around La Devinière, in the Chinon region of France. This rural, localized setting contrasts with the Homeric overtones of the conflict.
The army plunders and ransacks Grandgousier's lands. The attack on the Clos de l'Abbaye de Seuilly features the colorful character of Frère Jean des Entommeures, who cheerfully slaughters the looters. This episode is reminiscent of the sack of Rome, with the sacking of the vineyard evoking the threatened Church.
Picrochole seizes the castle of La Roche-Clermault, where he barricades himself solidly. In a bid to appease the invaders, Grandgousier sends his Master of Requests Ulrich Gallet to harangue them, while reminding his son in a letter of the need to defend his subjects. In an Erasmian spirit, he declares “I will not undertake war until I have tried all the ars and means of peace”, and tries to buy peace by compensating the fouaciers. Picrochole sees this as an admission of weakness; his advisors encourage his imperialist aims and invite him to conquer all the surrounding lands, as far as Asia Minor.