Consisting of five books, this masterpiece is Rabelais' magnum opus. It chronicles different events in the life of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. Using his learned wit and biting satire as a facade, Rabelais discusses several serious issues. The apparent humour and brilliant use of language offers pure reading pleasure. Entertaining and profound!
This classic work by the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) examines popular humor and folk culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. One of the essential texts of a theorist who is rapidly becoming a major reference in contemporary thought, Rabelais and His World is essential reading for anyone interested in problems of language and text and in cultural interpretation.
"A Companion to François Rabelais offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date account of the works of François Rabelais, one of the most influential writers of the Western literary tradition. A monk, medical doctor, translator and editor, Rabelais embodies the ideals of Renaissance humanism. His genre-bending fiction combines vast erudition, comic verve, and critical observations of all spheres of contemporary life that are relevant to this day. Two sections of this volume situate Rabelais's work in the larger social, political, and literary context of his time. A third section gives concise interpretations of each of the five books of the Pantagrueline Chronicles. The contributors are eminent scholars of early modern literature, many of whom write in English for the first time"--
Leads scholars and anyone who cares about the humanities into more effectively analyzing the fate of the humanities and digging into the very idea of the humanities as a way to find meaning and coherence in the world. The humanities, considered by many as irrelevant for modern careers and hopelessly devoid of funding, seem to be in a perpetual state of crisis, at the mercy of modernizing and technological forces that are driving universities towards academic pursuits that pull in grant money and direct students to lucrative careers. But as Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon show, this crisis isn’t new—in fact, it’s as old as the humanities themselves. Today’s humanities scholars experience and react to basic pressures in ways that are strikingly similar to their nineteenth-century German counterparts. The humanities came into their own as scholars framed their work as a unique resource for resolving crises of meaning and value that threatened other cultural or social goods. The self-understanding of the modern humanities didn’t merely take shape in response to a perceived crisis; it also made crisis a core part of its project. Through this critical, historical perspective, Permanent Crisis can take scholars and anyone who cares about the humanities beyond the usual scolding, exhorting, and hand-wringing into clearer, more effective thinking about the fate of the humanities. Building on ideas from Max Weber and Friedrich Nietzsche to Helen Small and Danielle Allen, Reitter and Wellmon dig into the very idea of the humanities as a way to find meaning and coherence in the world. ,
For this bilingual (English-French) anthology of early modern fictitious catalogues, selections were made from a multitude of texts, from the genre’s beginnings (Rabelais’s satirical catalogue of the Library of St.-Victor (1532)) to its French and Dutch specimens from around 1700. In thirteen chapters, written by specialists in the field, diverse texts containing fictitious booklists are presented and contextualized. Several of these texts are well known (by authors such as Fischart, Doni, and Le Noble), others – undeservedly – are less known, or even unrecorded. The anthology is preceded by a literary historical and theoretical introduction addressing the parodic and satirical aspects of the genre, and its relationship to other genres: theatre, novel, and pamphlet. Contributors: Helwi Blom, Tobias Bulang, Raphaël Cappellen, Ronnie Ferguson, Dirk Geirnaert, Jelle Koopmans, Marijke Meijer Drees, Claudine Nédelec, Patrizia Pellizzari, Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou, Paul J. Smith, and Dirk Werle.
Gargantua and Pantagruel is a pentalogy of novels which tells of the adventures of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. The book is written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein, and features much crudity, scatological humor, and violence.
Gargantua and Pantagruel is a pentalogy of novels which tells of the adventures of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. The book is written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein, and features much crudity, scatological humor, and violence.
