ISBN: 9781515384144

The arsehole is much maligned in modern times. It actually fits very neatly between two buttocks and fulfils a variety of roles - faecal, sexual, melodious, odiferous - as well as providi… Más…

The arsehole is much maligned in modern times. It actually fits very neatly between two buttocks and fulfils a variety of roles - faecal, sexual, melodious, odiferous - as well as providing us with an essential epithet for politicians.François Rabelais couldn't get enough of arseholes. When the giant Gargantua is born, the midwives can't tell at first if his mother's in labour, or merely evacuating her bowels of the 16 tuns, two gallons and two pints of tripe she's been eating. Another curious meal includes fine turds, tweak-nose style, Athenian rump, shitlets, collared bullfarts, stitched bum-stirrings, dirty-filths, puffs-up-my-bum and, for dessert, shit drench with blossoming turds. Here are some books in a Rabelais library: On the Art of Discreetly Farting in Company, On How to Defecate, Fundamental Floggings, The Gut-cavities of the Mendicants, Spanish Pongs, Super-refined, The Backgammon of Belly-bumping Friars and Martingale Breeches with Back-flaps for Turd-droppersBut the arse isn't all that Rabelais is interested in. Why the sea is salty, how to cook pears in red wine, ironmongery, weaponry, war (he's a little too interested in war), decapitation (ditto), the names of games (including judge alive, judge dead and shitty yew-twigs) and dances, glassware and grapes, history, mythology, archaeology, foolosophy, scholarship, medicine of course (as a doctor he risked his life to save victims of the plague), anatomy, botany, lechery, law, magic, superstition, religion, servants, aphrodisiacs, wines, astronomy, astrology, tourist sites, even sci-fi. He wants, like any real writer, to explain the whole world to us - comically, satirically, ethically and unethically.And the world's a messy place. All the big mock-heroic novels that followed Gargantua and Pantagruel - Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, Gulliver's Travels, Ulysses - are about mess, they're about slops and slime, encyclopedic in their efforts to encompass humanity in all its bawdy, sexy, chaotic, grungy, skanky, tumultuous and painful reality. They're also very funny. Rabelaisian rabble-rousing is founded on the assumption that the humourless are not yet wise - these novels insist you learn to laugh.Not for Rabelais the sheepish British notion that to be funny somehow reduces your seriousness as a writer: You, my good disciples - as well as some other leisured chumps - when reading no further than the titles of certain books of our devising (such as Gargantua, Pantagruel, On the Merits of Codpieces, On Pease-pudding and Bacon, with a Latin Commentary and so on), too readily conclude that nothing is treated inside save jests, idiocies and amusing fictions, seeing that their ... titles ... are normally greeted, without further enquiry, by scoffing and derision. It is not however proper to estimate so frivolously the works of human beings. Of course we like his idiocies best, but Rabelais was also a humanist, a moralist, a rebel (in serious trouble with the government and the Sorbonne for much of his life), and a genius.The chapter titles alone are a delight: How Grandgousier recognised the miraculous intelligence of Gargantua from his invention of a bum-wiper; How lawsuits are born and how they grow to perfection. The characters' names, from Sieur de Slurp-ffart and Seigneur de Grudge-crumb to le Duc de Free-meals and Captain Squit, display the agility of his translator, MA Screech, too. And Monty Python surely benefited from Rabelais's insults: superfluities, stubble-tooths, silly ginger-nuts, shit-the-beds, sneaky smooth-files, fat-guts, pretty puffs, bad-'uns, scruff-'eads, smirkers, teeth-clackers, cow-pat cowherds, and shitty shepherds.Rabelais mocks a student for over-doing Latinate terminology when describing his debaucheries: in venereal ecstasy, we inculcate our veretra into the most absconce recesses of the pudenda of those more amicital meretrices. Trade Books>Trade Paperback>Sf,Fantasy>SCIFI Anthologies>Anthologies, CreateSpace Publishing Core >1<

ISBN: 9781515384144

Gargantua by François Rabelais The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel (in French, La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th c… Más…

Gargantua by François Rabelais The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel (in French, La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by François 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. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience. Trade Books>Trade Paperback>Sf,Fantasy>SCIFI Anthologies>Anthologies, CreateSpace Publishing Core >1<

ISBN: 9781515384144

As a companion volume to Pantagruel, this new edition of Gargantua continues Rabelais’ acclaimed fantasy of a mythical family of giants. Gargantua introduces Pantagruel’s fath… Más…

As a companion volume to Pantagruel, this new edition of Gargantua continues Rabelais’ acclaimed fantasy of a mythical family of giants. Gargantua introduces Pantagruel’s father—another wondrous giant. As he tells Gargantua’s life story from his birth and education to his later life, Rabelais uses the events of the giant’s life to parody medieval and classical learning, mock traditional ecclesiastical authority, and proffer his own thoughts on humanism and society. Marked with the same warm humor, obsession with food, and scatological wit of Pantagruel, Gargantua is a further striking burlesque on Rabelais’ contemporaries and a glorious outpouring of Renaissance plenitude. Trade Books>Trade Paperback>SF&Fantasy>SCIFI Anthologies>Anthologies, CreateSpace Publishing Core >1<

ISBN: 9781515384144

As a companion volume to Pantagruel, this new edition of Gargantua continues Rabelais’ acclaimed fantasy of a mythical family of giants. Gargantua introduces Pantagruel’s fath… Más…

As a companion volume to Pantagruel, this new edition of Gargantua continues Rabelais’ acclaimed fantasy of a mythical family of giants. Gargantua introduces Pantagruel’s father—another wondrous giant. As he tells Gargantua’s life story from his birth and education to his later life, Rabelais uses the events of the giant’s life to parody medieval and classical learning, mock traditional ecclesiastical authority, and proffer his own thoughts on humanism and society. Marked with the same warm humor, obsession with food, and scatological wit of Pantagruel, Gargantua is a further striking burlesque on Rabelais’ contemporaries and a glorious outpouring of Renaissance plenitude. Trade Books>Trade Paperback>Sf,Fantasy>SCIFI Anthologies>Anthologies, CreateSpace Publishing Core >1<

ISBN: 9781515384144

Paperback, [PU: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform], The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel (in French, La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a connected series of five novel… Más…

Paperback, [PU: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform], The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel (in French, La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by François 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., Classics<