Critique pantagruel benjamin lazar biography

I wholeheartedly agree with Alex's advice to read the first two books and skip the rest. It was perhaps my lucky day when chance put in my hands this volume, which contains two works by the man who is perhaps considered the first great novelist in literature history. Gargantua and Pantagruel are part of these complete works which alone embrace several literary sources: the novel of chivalry, the fantastic tale, parody and satire…; as well as several themes and sources of inspiration: war, education, burlesque dialogues, fantastic journeys, verisimilitude and improbability, fantasy This heterogeneous mixture is based on great freedom and improvisation; a pleasant and surprising style that we find in the first great fictional works like Don Quixote by Cervantes, Jacques Le Fataliste by Diderot or perhaps even Tristam Shandy by Sterne.

These works that have made novelists dream and which still fascinate readers. This could repel some fans of the classic nineteenth-century novel. But you should know that we are in front of two masterful works where the imagination had this magic of the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. This kind of series of stories can insert other stories in the same vein, another fantastic night without the text losing its general unity.

We find images in the masters of magical realism in whom humour goes hand in hand with depth. In Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais used his erudition and his sense of observation to create this universe with its unforgettable characters among them this famous Panurge. For the modern reader that we are, Rabelais and his two works link with the 16th century, where so many changes have taken place, especially in terms of language.

Rabelais makes us relive this bygone century with its customs, its conflicts, its great ideas, its quarrels, this spirit of humanism as well as this thirst for knowledge worthy of the Renaissance; all this expressed with great relief and picturesque especially with humour and erudition. Rabelais tells us about these two good giants' itinerary since their birth, describing their education and their exploits and prowess.

I miss having time to read Uninterrupted hours and time to think about what I read But we take on other tasks knowing we must make and remake ourselves and the ones we care about every day all day A chisel is a tool against critique pantagruel benjamin lazar biography, but one starts feeling stupid chiseling at wind Truly eternal wellspring, it is all a beautiful balm.

And, above all things transient and material, it is always a good thing to be reminded of the sole tenet of pantagruelism, my friends: LIVE JOYFULLY To the sum Good, however nebulous but known, that this counterbalances the sum Bad, we must do into our own destructions; the most important part is to live joyfully until one can no longer live, NOT just until one can no longer find joy within living.

Despite all otherwise appearances, joy may very well be the psychic expression of the physical act of living. I hope we all find and shelter that, as that is a resistance predicated upon love against the gathering armies of darkness and hatred. We just get to call it a day and head for home. You have to have a certain type of sense of humour to enjoy this.

And a taste for lists. And for shaggy dog stories. A sense of the ridiculous also helps. It's learned, playful and inventive. A book in which you can learn that the neck of a goose is the best thing for wiping your arse the goose presumably holds a divergent opinion on thisappreciate some of the pitfalls of conducting a formal academic debate in a university using your own invented sign language and learn why if you go to war against a giant who has a giant horse with a full bladder you should keep your army out of valleys and other low-lying areas.

How to describe this book? You don't describe it, you read it, hahahaha This book is absurd. It makes me think absurd things and make stupid jokes. It has some funny moments, yes, but it's sort of like when you're with that one funny friend who just takes it all a step too far and can't let a joke go, and pretty soon it's just like, "Yeah, dude, shut up already.

But the thing is there's this whole other And it's worth reading through the muck to get to it, even if you don't understand all of it or any of it. Rabelais was a master of language, and I think this book illustrates that impressively. He made up a lot of words, way before people like David Foster Wallace or Alexander Theroux were making up words.

There are whole paragraphs where you're trying to follow along and at the end of it you realize that less than half of those words were probably even real words, and ain't nobody got time to go looking them all up just to be certain. This is a ride, a Gargantua and Pantagruel ride, and you're better off just shutting up and going along with it.

Obviously some words are easier to realize are made up than others. Some of these words are not like the others, for example: But what harm had poor I done? WTF, right? And on the same page: One of the querries, who, hopping and halting like a mumping cripple, mimicked the good limping Lord de la Roche Posay, directed his discourse to the bum with the pouting jaw, and told him, What, Mr Manhound, was it not enough thus to have morecrocastebezasteverestegrigeligoscopapopondrillated us all in our upper members with your botched mittens, but you must also apply such moderegripippiatabirofreluchamburelurecaquelurintimpaniments on our shinbones with the hard tops and extremities of your cobbled shoes.

Let's just get this out of the way now, shall we? There are lots of occasions like that where even if you critique pantagruel benjamin lazar biography the goofy words, the sentences don't make a whole lot of sense, and you're still sort of reeling from trying to tell from the big word what is really being said that the whole page just needs to be lit on fire.

It almost seems like I didn't like this book, doesn't it? There's no point in really discussing the story itself though there are unicorns! I like unicorns! Funny, considering I didn't read this in the actual French because that would be cray-crayso how can I say anything about the language? Two different translators were involved in this particular edition, the second of whom is apparently considered sort of a hack, so who's to say that the last two books out of the five that make up this behemoth are even close to the original French?

I mean besides bilingual people who are insane enough to read the French and English side-by-side and not expect to get paid for it. In some of the made-up words that didn't take off, there are other words that Rabelais used in this book that are now actual words that we use like every day. Gargantuan is just one of them. Poor Pantagruel - his name didn't become an adjective.

The introduction tells me these are words that Rabelais introduced the modern reader, which means he was wicked smart, right? Or the modern reader was terribly stupid. Thanks for making modern readers smarter, Rabelais! It makes one wonder if Rabelais' friends who got to read advanced readers copies of this book totally hated him for making up words, because they probably didn't know either which ones were real and which were made up.

Good stuff, right? And for once I'm glad I read the introduction first because I would probably not have figured that out on my own because I'm not all that smart. But it makes complete sense. The first two books are more like The Iliad and the last two books are more like The Odyssey not surprisingly I enjoyed those books more than the first few since I thought The Odyssey is Homer's bestestbut the introduction doesn't say what the third book is like.

Apparently the third book isn't Homer-esque at all and is therefore of no real importance. But, anyway, since you're not asking, the story itself is about giants who tell fart jokes and there's talk of 16th-century boners and food. And unicorns. I'm pretty sure some other stuff happened too. Author 3 books followers. Five full stars, but really how given that this is the Mater Familias of that whole riverrunning Shandean Spawn Same review posted in all three places.

Actually a listen; audiobook was very well done. Review unchanged from first read. Indeed, he could not get in, for he was too critique pantagruel benjamin lazar biography. But he sat astride of it, with one foot on each side, as small children do on hobby-horses, or as the great Bull of Berne, who was killed at Marignan, riding astride on a great stone-hurling canon, which is undoubtedly a beast, of a fine, jolly pace.

What a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark, purplish, yellow color, here and there stuck over with large, blackish looking squares… Ishmael, on first beholding Queequeg. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice. Realism of grand style, in Stendhal, Balzac, Hugo, and Dickens, for instance, was always linked directly or indirectly with the Renaissance tradition.

Breaking away from this tradition diminished the scope of realism and transformed it into naturalist empiricism. Bakhtin Rabelais and His World Millions of words have been written about these books, so this will be a review limited to a serendipitous reading. My reading plan for includes both Moby Dick read decades ago and Gargantua and Pantagruel.

What had happened between and ? Had Melville read Rabelais? It turns out that not only had Melville read Rabelais, but he had read him only a year or two previously in a great binge of classics, and his novel Mardi immediately preceding MD was criticized as too dependent on Rabelais. Bakhtin comments extensively on how the Romantics lost the joyful, regenerative aspect of the grotesque that abounds in Rabelais, a concept that strongly colored the way I read the rest of the novels.

I have read additional bits of biography and other criticism as I went along, but mostly this review is an unmediated reaction to these three books. On land, Ishmael and Queequeg revel in oyster stew and their physicality; they proceed by happenstance and whim. On the Pequod life is ruled by bells and rank, and absolute hierarchy reigns: Starbuck is repeatedly rebuked for respectfully, even piously, suggesting the monomaniacal chase is ill-chosen.

This is the complete reverse of the Feast of Fools atmosphere of Carnival, where the lowly can say anything to the powerful, and a commoner is elected King or Pope for a day. A selection of observations note: many spoilers below : First of all, of course, one confronts the revolving omnibus approach to the novel. These two gargantuan works encompass everything: satire, broad humor, slapstick, tragedy, scientific treatises, battles, quests, erudition, philosophical reflections, psychology, political and religious satire and commentary, exploration, the ocean, the bonds formed by men fighting the elements and the enemy, food, and so much more.

Then there is the observant narrator. Who is this? An issue that would take much thought. The grandiose ruler who destroys his kingdom: Ahab and Picrochole. Discourses on rope: the harpoon line and hemp. Unknown lands were being explored. Although Ishmael still insists the whale is a fish. The industrial revolution meant the mechanics of everything were of interest, and the mechanics of whaling populate every page.

He has a long explanation of the circulation of the blood. In battles, no one is ever just run through with a lance: the path through every organ and tendon is detailed. The guts and genitals of the Carnival are evolving into a Renaissance awareness of anatomy and science. The practical joke. Attention has turned from the body to profit.

The repeated advice from outsiders to cease and desist. No, they all agree he will be a cuckold in short order, beaten and robbed. Similarly, Ahab is advised by Starbuck, the English Captain and the other Nantucket captain who has lost his son to give up this irrational and doomed chase. But neither Ahab nor Panurge can be reached—they are consumed by their passions.

But then, neither do Ishmael and Queequeg heed Elijah when he warns them about Ahab. So their last land-based encounter with Elijah could be looked at as a turning point between whim and unswerving mission. In any case, both Panurge and Ahab end up pursuing their passionate quest in a ship, and barely surviving a tremendous storm. One of the most complex comparisons between the two novels involves Panurge and Pip.

Religion: Rabelais was a monk, although perhaps a reluctant one. He also trained as a physician, and, unusual for his time, knew Greek. Hard to say. Rival orders parade through one story after another. That inability to understand much of Rabelais without help because of so many intervening centuries was frustrating. He is magnanimous in victory.

There is so much more to say. These are books I will think about and come back to, I know. Hard copy: I have not yet explored the material, but I think the critical apparatus in the Norton edition of Moby Dick will be very useful, even if the Rockwell Kent illustrations in the Modern Library edition are lovely. And to be a good, alternative translation.

And on Bakhtin: yes, he is repetitive, but worth it; much to think about there. Author 6 books followers. Ma le opere degli uomini non vanno giudicate con tanta leggerezza [ Rebelais Questo libro parla di bischerare e biscottare, gozzovigliare e banchettare, di pisciare ed orinare, di cagare e defecare. Narra di becchi e di veggenti, di ignavi e di combattenti.

E d'altro ancora. Che altro aggiungere io posso per convincervi che tal testo fa per voi o per niente affatto? Leggetelo, non leggetelo. XD Chiedo scusa. Si fa per giocare. Ronald Morton. So enjoy yourselves my loves happily reading what follows for your bodily comfort and the good of your loins. Listen now, you ass-pizzles. May ulcers give you gammy legs: and remember to drink a toast back to me!

And I shall pledge you double quick. A note, to begin, on this particular edition the Penguin Classics translation by M. He does this mostly with the text itself, with some minor footnoting as well. It was easy to follow, and I loved the additional insight to the textual differences. And, second - and this was particularly wonderful - he provides an introduction to each chapter, providing background and references up front.

Critique pantagruel benjamin lazar biography

In this manner he keeps the amount of footnotes to a minimum, while still catering to the lay reader. This is greatly facilitated by the very short chapters of the text, but I still wish I would see this method used more frequently, as I vastly prefer it to having to bounce back and forth checking footnotes or, even worse, endnotes. Now, on to the text itself.

Well, actually: before that, some random notes from the first pages, before I really put my head down and got to reading. Rabelais really liked the word syphilitic. A lot. The Latinate distortion of originally French, translationally English in the sixth chapter is exceptionally well done both by Rabelais and by Screech and funny. I wish the made up list of books were real.

I'd read them all. It's quickly obvious how inventive Rabelais is in his satire, and how varied his approaches are going to be. Much as in Sterne's Tristam Shandy, even though the humor of the book is undeniable, what really stands out is both Rabelais' erudition, as well as his education. This is a highly learned text, which balances piety, crass humor, witty satire, and deft displays of intelligence with aplomb.

Slurp-ffart might be one of the greatest surnames in literature. Wall of vaginas. I hit the beast tale and thought to myself, I should read Ysengrimus again; and, lo and behold, Brother Renard shows up. Holy shit this is bawdy. Squeeze-crupper It was too audaciously funny. One of the most notable differences between the earlier version and the definitive version is that almost any time a small number was in the original text, Rabelais has made it ludicrously larger in the definitive version.

The other major notable frequent change is that Rabelais adds hyper specific details to the text, frequently also with numbers - where there is an insanely large number in the text, Rabelais adds either integer details down to the decimal, or adds a fractional specific. Both of these make the text much more extravagant, over the top, and generally add a great deal to the overall hilarity of the work.

It's also a fascinating revision process, and again is a notable highlight of this particular version. The thing about this book is that there is very little that it does not do; it is vulgar, certainly, absolutely; it is also encyclopedic and list-loving; it is frequently funny, hilarious at times; it is learned, multi lingual, well read, philosophical; it's also kind of tedious at times, especially the long extremely long section dedicated to Panurge seeking wedding advice, especially because he is destined to be cuckolded.

But, there is almost no stretch of this book - even the long winded tedious parts - that is not interesting, or funny, or absurd frequently all three ; sometimes it's just an interesting phrasing, or vulgar anecdote, or bawdy reference, or passing insult, but Rabelais keeps things interesting and rewarding throughout the duration of the book. Much of you like was done critique pantagruel benjamin lazar biography, hundreds of years ago, and it remains vital and compelling even today.

One more random note: September This is going to be a long term, yet highly enjoyable, reading project. Gargantua and Pantagruel is the anti-novel before the novel, a proto-Swift, a proto-Pynchon, who combines and blurs the boundary between low and high culture. It's also highly readable, as each chapter is maybe pages long. December The behemoth has finally fallen, slain at my feet by my feat?

What memories have I of the battle? That it was one of the greatest battles I've ever fought. Gargantua and Pantagruel is a simultaneously a history of, commentary on, and parody of, the Occident from the dawn of civilization through the European Renaissance, as seen through the eyes of a probably twisted 16th-century French monk named Francois Rabelais.

Its scope covers the classics works of Greek and Latin, medieval romances, epics, as well as such "low" topics as cuckoldry, codpieces, and any bodily function you can think of. It is about this book, after all, that Bahktin formed his theory of the Carnival, in which the king is turned on his head, his crown on his ass, and thus the low being elevated and conflated with the high.

But Rabelais is not just about destroying the boundary between the vulgar and the classic; he also imbues his stories with unique ways of looking at the world. One such example of this comes from Book 4 which, along with Book 5, comprises the story of a quest for the Oracle of the Bottle, a parody of the Holy Grail : While Pantagruel and his crew are out to sea, they hear strange noises, as if words from humans' mouths, though no one else is around.

Eventually, Pantagruel discovers these critiques pantagruel benjamin lazar biography to be the thawing of frozen words and other sounds in the air from years before. One could literally pluck the words out of the air hear their utterances as they melt into sound once again. There are only two possible things to detract one from reading Gargantua and Pantagruel : the length and the archaic language.

As for the latter, I find that the Shakespearean English makes the ribaldry all the more hilarious. As for the former i. In short, never has a monster such as Gargantua and Pantagruel walked the earth before, and never shall one again. Thank you, Colin, for reminding me to add this book to my Hate Shelf. Great hammer of Thor, I hate this book.

It is the most heinous book ever. I can handle the Renaissance humor, although, as my dad put it we both got stuck reading this book in college classes and our mutual hate of Rabelais binds us together : "There's only so much you can do with codpiece jokes. Well said. I know that this was considered an important transition between renaissance literature and the beginnings of what we call the novel, but I found this next to impossible to get into.

Rabelais might not have invented toilet humor, but he stretches it out about as far as it can possibly go which ultimately, isn't that far. The constant references to glands and bodily fluids get old real fast. I suppose that in the 16th century, the fact that people poop, pee, spit, vomit, sneeze, fornicate and fart was cause for endless laughter, and those things can still be funny, just not for pages on end.

The whole thing is a colorful and inventive mess, but a mess none the less. If you're looking for something to read from this era, try Don Quixote instead, it's got plenty of toilet humor but actually has good characters and a delirious narrative structure which really puts this bloated thing to shame. Je crois que ces maroufles veulent que je leur paye ici ma bienvenue et ma gratification.

Ils ont raison. Je vais leur donner le vin Author 2 books 1, followers. I read this years ago in the Everyman's Library edition, which reprints an old translation by Sir Thomas Urquhart. Urquhart has been criticized for taking liberties with his translation--i. I'm never going to read this book in French. And Urquhart was himself a brilliant writer, and his translation is a marvel.

So over-the-top funny and strange, such verbose genuis, I had a hard time putting it down. On horoscopes; read his Pantegrueliene Prognostication, which I translated for my friend's Jan 1 birthday, This year, the fashionable woman wears her face in front, her behind behind; this year hats will be worn on heads primarily, while pussies will be black for the most part.

Numerous virgins will lose something, due to Venus and a full moon; and litigious men will find lawyers to press their claim. I foresee…the rich will fare some better than the poor; the healthy, still better yet than the myriad of sick-- But Oh! I see great slaughter among beef, pork and chicken. Nothing will abate their killer's appetite.

And, sad to report, I fear great strife between dog and cat, man and wife; between the skinny and the fat; between Arab and Jew, Greek and Turk; between the blond-haired, and the black. But cheer up. This year will see wealth increase, and this will be among those who have no need of it. We predict a fiscal surplus such that the governmnet will have to overpay many, to come out even; some, twice they'll pay and dub them double-dippers.

Likewise, we expect to see a decrease of coin among the needy. There will be, in sum, floods, fires, wars, flus, and hatred, vengeance, sensational crimes; old age will prove fatal to many, but rashness will kill more young than old. This year, the influence preponderent will be the U. Listen, keep with this one list; don't believe any half-assed futurist.

And finally, I most predict, all other forecasts aren't worth shit. I'd echo what pretty much everyone says in that you probably don't need to read all of this, but everyone should at least read Pantagruel Book 1 as bare minimum, if not also Gargantua and Book 3. The first book is by far the most fun, and you get a good sense of the particular humanism of Rabelais which gives him his legacy.

Here the indignity of someone shitting their pants is on par with the candor of Socrates declaring he knows nothing. His general style is combining low brow body humor with varying levels of erudite references and jokes, with a satirical target in mind. He draws a lot from Erasmus, More, and the classical world Plutarch especiallybut many times he'll have some very specific legal joke that requires the generous notes in order to pick up on.

The general thrust of his satire is still readily apparent though. For example in book 3 they consult their archetype of a holy fool, a man who can divine the way of god accidentally through his babblings: a lawyer. The lawyer babbles in esoteric legal talk for 20 pages as way of explaining why he decides cases by throwing dice. It's a fun joke, we get it, but I can see how stuff like this could be taxing at times, especially if the poop and cuck jokes don't resolve the tension for you.

For the first three books there is a general self contained style in each. The fourth book introduces the frame narrative of a boat journey as a way of having an episodic set of unconnected shenanigans and brief satirical sketches. This isn't so bad and boring, a lot of them are quite fun and in the same spirit of the previous books, but if you're to see this point forward as a drop in quality it's because it drops all sense of cohesiveness and never quite says anything new.

Cohesiveness didn't quite concern Rabelais before, and now he sets himself loose. We're still 70 or so years from Don Quixote, which sports a similar satirical style but manages to form a cohesive whole over what is superficially episodic. Cervantes is constantly building on his ideas, whereas Rabelais has a big well of Pantagruelism which he draws from in various gushes; at best he is only successive rather than iterative as with book 3.

But you can forgive him for not being as far ahead of his time as Cervantes he was far enough as it standsand his bad books are better than some people's good books. If people say to skip them it is only for redundancy. On the whole, Rabelais should still be read, whatever the manner may be. One of the LibriVox narrators is cracking me up!

I'm so entertained. So far he's continuously sipped from a glass of soda, burped, has a couple of hacking coughing fits, and he just farted loud enough the microphone picked it up. More reviews and ratings. Join the discussion. Can't find what you're looking for? There is no such thing as critique pantagruel benjamin lazar biography in Rabelais.

Indeed, the frantic nature of the book is coupled by the fact that latter editors spent a great deal of time revising and re-writing the book such that there are now many differing versions available and it is difficult to discern the true authority of the text. Perhaps that is part of the joke —a complete lack of authority. However, taken in another light, Pantagruel is an unparalleled satire of the new age.

Filled with farting, puking, lechery, genitalia jokes, diseases, excretions, and so on; and yet this ribaldry is also coupled with ceaseless allusions to the classics -Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Virgil and so on. It compares lowly things with noble things. It is a mock-epic. Like Don QuixotePantagruel was written as if to be a true history appealing to all classes of people.

The lecherous jokes appeal to the crowd, while the more high-brow lore are offered for the more educated classes. Why is Pantagruel laughable? The book is funny precisely because it makes no sense. It is a hurried history, as if Pantagruel was an illustrious or an important person accomplishing important things. On the contrary, he lacks wisdom.

He is large and out of place, he is a physical anomaly, and he is continually dropped into seemingly random situations wherein order is turned into chaos. In the grand scheme, the whole text is a parody of an ancient epic. On a smaller scale, everyone is laughing at the circus fun-house mirror clown-show of ridiculousness: the Catholic Church, the Bible, the Sorbonne, Parisian intellectuals, country folk, rich businessmen, poor people, fat ladies and so on.

All people and everything are laughed at throughout the text. Indeed, the satire is a mirror to the reader. Who are we laughing at? The whole of Western culture? The highly esteemed tradition of our culture? The preservation of its knowledge? All are mocked. In this way Pantagruellike the works of Aristophanes, is hardly innocent or at least it is not devoid of political significance.

Rabelais, himself, was concerned with the particular prejudices of his time, thus needing to conceal his name. Since 15th century France was a place of particular prejudices, a bawdy and salacious satirist like Francois Rabelais was in need of a disguise, a cloak to hide his name from the church and the Sorbonne. Thus he chose the name: Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram of Francois Rabelais.

The original title of the first book of Pantagruel was as follows: Pantagruel, The horrifying and dreadful deeds and prowess of the most famous Pantagruel, king of the dipsodes son of the great Giant Gargantua. It was published in It spawned five sequels. Rabelaisian — a descriptive word meaning someone who is chaotically or perhaps even crudely and absurdly humorous.

Rabelais was likely born inor perhaps in France. He studied law and then studied under the Franciscans before getting into trouble for excessive study of the ancient Greeks, including translation of portions of Herodotus, so he became a monk i. He later studied medicine Galen and Hippocrates. Laws against heresy and restrictions on books.

During his life, he had primarily liberal Renaissance-influenced patrons who financed his studies, translations, and writings. Throughout his life he was persecuted for his writings, resorting to lying low in hiding, and the Sorbonne condemned his novel s.