Gargantua and Pantagruel

Gargantua and Pantagruel is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by Francois Rabelais. It is the story of two giants, a father (Gargantua) and his son (Pantagruel) and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein. The text features much crudity, scatological humor, and violence. Lists of explicit or vulgar insults fill several chapters. The censors of the Sorbonne stigmatized it as obscene, and in a social climate of increasing religious oppression, it was dealt with suspicion, and contemporaries avoided mentioning it. According to Rabelais, the philosophy of his giant Pantagruel, "Pantagruelism," is rooted in "a certain gaiety of mind pickled in the scorn of fortuitous things." Rabelais's giants are not described as being of any fixed height, as in the first two books of Gulliver's Travels, but vary in size from chapter to chapter to enable a series of astonishing images as though these were tall tales.