91 pages • 3 hours read
François Rabelais, Transl. Thomas UrquhartGargantua And Pantagruel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1564A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Literary Devices
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
Ridiculing and Reforming Religion
Religion is central to the language, narrative, and aim of the books: Rabelais invokes God in all his Prologues, uses allusions and narrative conventions from the Bible, debates the question of right faith, satirizes the current condition of the Church, and presents his model of the ideal Christian religion through figures like Pantagruel, Gargantua, Grandgousier, and Friar Jean. At the heart of all his inquiries is the question of how to build a reformed, humanist Christian faith that is in continuum with the religion and philosophy of antiquity, while rejecting what Rabelais depicts as the Church’s corrupt practices.
References to biblical conventions include Pantagruel’s genealogy in Book 1, Chapter 1, written in the style of such genealogies in the Old Testament. Rabelais shows through the list of Pantagruel’s antecedents that nothing was above satire for him, not even his own faith. In Book 1, Chapter 8, Gargantua writes a letter to Pantagruel that is filled with Christian lessons, such as “you should serve, love, and fear God […] by faith informed with charity, live conjoined to Him in such a way as never to be cut off from Him by sin” (49). In the same letter, Gargantua also exhorts Pantagruel to study the classics and learn Greek as well as Hebrew (the language of the Old Testament). Not only does the letter offer a model of the syncretic Christian faith closest to Rabelais’s own ideals, but it also spurs a change in Pantagruel, his mind now darting amongst his books “like a flame among the heather” (50). The blending of Christian instruction and reverence for “pagan” classicism reflects the humanist commitment to reviving the ancients within Christian civilization.
The Abbey of Theleme in Book 2 acts as the ideal monastery. The question of the ideal monastic order was pertinent for Rabelais, who had trained first in the Franciscan and then in the Benedictine order, ultimately leaving both. Rabelais was an unhappy monk, considering the Franciscans’ disapproval of Greek learning extreme parochialism and the Benedictines to be too joyless. He broke from the Benedictines to become a secular priest and study medicine at the University of Montpellier. Nevertheless, Rabelais was a Christian, and Friar Jean—the character who some consider a stand-in for the author—is referred throughout to as “The Monk,” showing Rabelais’s continued interest in the clergy and its foibles. In Theleme, the only rule is “Do what thou wilt” (373), and men and women live in the same abbey, while God’s will and free will coexist in a Utopian model.
While Theleme is the ideal monastic order and Grandgousier and Gargantua practice the ideal kind of Christianity, the text contains several allusions to corrupt and unfavorable practices of religion. Rabelais criticizes Panurge’s misappropriation of the Bible to justify his argument in Book 3, Chapter 7, as was common for many a lawyer in the day. In Book 4, the description of the Papefigues and the Papimanes is a severe indictment of the corruption of the Catholic Church and their persecution of the Waldensians, who had aligned themselves more with Protestantism. In similar fashion, Book 5, Chapter 3 uses the allegory of Ringing Island to denounce the various monastical orders (represented as birds) and the Popinjay (a parrot), an obvious reference to the pope. Rabelais also critiques excessive superstition in the case of Panurge and belief in witchcraft. Thus, throughout the novel, Rabelais both satirizes the excesses of Catholicism while reaffirming some of its more ideal ethical precepts and potential for humanist development.
The Development of Education
In Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais explores how education can create an idealized Renaissance individual: a multilingual, multitalented person with a thirst for discovery and knowledge. For Rabelais, such an education is an advance from medieval scholasticism, which he believed to be a parochial and empty model of learning, geared toward sophistry and superfluous rhetoric. To this end, he presents two distinct models for education in the first two books, both promoting humanist practices while also gently satirizing their excesses.
Pantagruel goes away from home to learn. Journey and life in the city serve as a metaphor for exposing oneself to unfamiliar situations. Further, Pantagruel’s journey is not limited to one university, but several different universities and places. Education means exposure, and travel is once again a metaphor for evolution. However, Rabelais satirizes even this model of itinerant exploration. From Poitiers, Pantagruel proceeds to “Toulouse, where he learnt how to dance very well and to play with the two-handed sword as is the custom amongst students at that university […] Then he entered Avignon, where he was barely three days before he fell in love” (32). As this passage shows, even the Renaissance model of exploratory learning can devolve into a superfluous survey. It is Gargantua’s letter to Pantagruel, which advises undergirding the Renaissance spirit of inquiry with a Christian sense of duty, that ignites a real, deep love for learning in Pantagruel. A universal satirist and social critic, Rabelais analyzed even the humanism in which he participated and noted its flaws.
In Book 2, Grandgousier first ignores the childhood schooling of Gargantua, but when he sees his son regress to an animalistic state, delighting in filth and depravity, Grandgousier realizes he has fallen short as a parent. He gets Gargantua a progressive teacher, Ponocrates, who is sensitive and aware enough not to radically change Gargantua’s model of learning: “As Ponocrates grew familiar with Gargantua’s vicious manner of life, he began to plan a different course of instruction for the lad; but at first he let the latter go his own way, remembering that nature does not endure sudden changes without great violence” (124).
However, Gargantua’s new education does not result in a perfect change: “Gargantua was instructed by Ponocrates in such a manner that he did not waste an hour of the day” (124). Gargantua spends his entire day perfecting himself. Here, Rabelais also subtly satirizes the relentless urge to be the perfect Renaissance individual. While the Renaissance model of education is better than medieval scholasticism, it too has its flaws, and must be tempered with common sense and Christian purpose to become useful instead of mere pretension.
Furthermore, the characters ultimately learn through both active practice as well as study. Gargantua is called to battle in the middle of his education in a return to the norms of Medieval chivalry; the battle experience enriches and educates Gargantua in ways a more “sophisticated” education cannot. In Books 4 and 5, Pantagruel’s sea-voyage also serves as a means for practical education, testing the mettle of the young hero. Rabelais does not have an easy answer for the perfect education, but suggests that education is most useful when tied into a larger moral purpose, practicality, and sense of self-awareness.
The Treatment of Women
The role—or general lack of a role—of women in the text speaks to some of the stereotypes of women in Renaissance literature and society. Women symbolize the “other,” the “untrustworthy,” the “insatiable,” and the “lascivious.” They are frequently the source of ridicule, laughter, and disgust, such as when Panurge proposes making a wall out of women’s genitals because “the thingummybobs of women are cheaper than stone. You should build walls of them, arranging them with good architectural symmetry, putting the biggest ones in the front ranks, then sloping them back upwards” (81). Book 3, Chapter 34 is titled “How women normally desire forbidden things,” with Panurge stating that he knows he might get cuckolded because “women are by nature insatiable” (514). These are but a few of the many examples of sexist humor in the text, conforming to common comedic tropes about women in the time period.
However, despite all these examples, many critics argue that the text cannot be called anti-feminist. Within the context of his time, when misogyny in writing was common, Rabelais is not particularly virulent in his views. In fact, after the problematic Pantagruel—which does deploy sexist humor and women’s shaming to an extreme—the other books explore some spaces where women can exist with autonomy. The abbey at Theleme is not conceptualized as a male-only space, but as a place where nuns and monks both train, though the admitted nuns have to be “good-looking.” Friar Jean states that since the current practice in some abbeys is to clean every place where a woman has been, in Theleme “it was decreed that, should any monk or nun happen to come in, they would scour clean all the places they might have passed through” (361). This equitable approach shows that at least theoretically—and with many caveats of decency and beauty attached—women can have the same rights as men. Thus, Rabelais’s anti-women bias coexists with his charitable, Christian humanism.
During Pantagruel’s journeys, the crew also comes across female rulers and queens, who are generally described in benign terms, be it Niphleseth, the Queen of the Chidlings (though her name has obscene connotations, as discussed in the Literary Devices section) or the Queen of Quintessence. It is also significant that the object of the journey in Books 4 and 5 is the Dive Bouteille, a feminine figure. Despite all the characters’ comments about the untrustworthiness of women, it is a female who will answer the questions of Panurge and set him to rest. The Lantern that leads the group to the Oracle is also female. The contrast between women in the real world and women in idealized and fantastical settings thus shows that Rabelais is aware of the limits of his time and place. Equality for women is theoretically possible, but improbable. This tussle between idealized and stereotypical depictions of womanhood defines the text’s attitude toward women.
