David Koptcho Francois Rabelais/ Gargantua and Pantagruel The story of Gargantua and Pantagruel is basically a satirical story of the french writer Francois Rabelais. Francois tells of the adventures of two giants, father and son, Gargantua and Pantagruel. They make fun of the vices and foolishness of the people and institutions of Rabelais’s time. His humor is at times so dark and his criticism of the Roman Catholic Church so telling that it is difficult to believe that for most of his life he was a priest. I believe that the sole intention of this work is to poke and dig at the people and intrest’s that Rabelais disliked, which you can tell by him bringing real people into the story. I don’t feel that there is any deep meaning to this work other than to express his dislikes for his world’s ideals. In the next few paragraphs I will try to pick apart the work of Francois Rabelais and express my ideas on the meaning of the work, Gargantua and Pantagruel. The reading starts off with the education of a giant humanist, Gargantua. The word humanist used to describe the giant is a word or feeling of the authors dislike with the culture he lives among. Humanist people are ones that are devoted to the humanities, literary culture, they only focus on the world in which they live in, not the world of the supernatural, such as heaven. I believe this secular kind of ideals the French had during the renaissance bothered Rabelais to the point of exposing it and making fun of it in this work. I also feel this must be the case because of the author’s background of being in the church, he felt that people were more concerned with the material world rather than the worship of the lord. The chapter goes on to tell of Gargantua studying moral quatrains by foolish philosophers such as “ Maitre Blowhard Birdbrain”. Moral quatrains were actually part of the educational curricul...
