Pantagruel  

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Gargantua, Ponocrates, John Friar

Pantagruel is the fictional hero of the first book of the novel sequence Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais published in 1532.

Pantagruel is also the title of the first volume of the novel sequence, although most modern editions of Rabelais's work place Pantagruel as the second volume of a series. It was published around 1532 under the pen name Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram of François Rabelais. Pantagruel was a sequel to an anonymous book entitled Les Grandes Chroniques du Grand et Enorme Géant Gargantua. This early Gargantua text enjoyed great popularity, despite its rather poor construction. 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. For example, in one chapter Pantagruel is able to fit into a courtroom to argue a case but in another the narrator resides inside Pantagruel's mouth for 6 months and discovers an entire nation living around his teeth.

Table of contents

• The Author's Prologue,prologue to Pantagruel[1]
• The Author's Prologue
• I.--Of the original and antiquity of the great Pantagruel
• II.--Of the nativity of the most dread and redoubted Pantagruel
• III.--Of the grief wherewith Gargantua was moved at the decease of his wife Badebec
• IV.--Of the infancy of Pantagruel
• V.--Of the acts of the noble Pantagruel in his youthful age
• VI.--How Pantagruel met with a Limousin, who too affectedly did counterfeit the French language
• VII.--How Pantagruel came to Paris, and of the choice books of the Library of St. Victor
• VIII.--How Pantagruel, being at Paris, received letters from his father Gargantua, and the copy of them
• IX.--How Pantagruel found Panurge, whom he loved all his lifetime
• X.--How Pantagruel judged so equitably of a controversy, which was wonderfully obscure and difficult, that, by reason of his just decree therein, he was reputed to have a most admirable judgment
• XI.--How the Lords of Kissbreech and Suckfist did plead before Pantagruel without an attorney
• XII.--How the Lord of Suckfist pleaded before Pantagruel
• XIII.--How Pantagruel gave judgment upon the difference of the two lords
• XIV.--How Panurge related the manner how he escaped out of the hands of the Turks
• XV.--How Panurge showed a very new way to build the walls of Paris
• XVI.--Of the qualities and conditions of Panurge
• XVII.--How Panurge gained the pardons, and married the old women, and of the suit in law which he had at Paris
• XVIII.--How a great scholar of England would have argued against Pantagruel, and was overcome by Panurge
• XIX.--How Panurge put to a nonplus the Englishman that argued by signs
• XX.--How Thaumast relateth the virtues and knowledge of Panurge
• XXI.--How Panurge was in love with a lady of Paris
• XXII.--How Panurge served a Parisian lady a trick that pleased her not very well
• XXIII.--How Pantagruel departed from Paris, hearing news that the Dipsodes had invaded the land of the Amaurots; and the cause wherefore the leagues are so short in France
• XXIV.--A letter which a messenger brought to Pantagruel from a lady of Paris, together with the exposition of a posy written in a gold ring
• XXV.--How Panurge, Carpalin, Eusthenes, and Epistemon, the gentlemen attendants of Pantagruel, vanquished and discomfited six hundred and threescore horsemen very cunningly
• XXVI.--How Pantagruel and his company were weary in eating still salt meats; and how Carpalin went a-hunting to have some venison
• XXVII.--How Pantagruel set up one trophy in memorial of their valour, and Panurge another in remembrance of the hares. How Pantagruel likewise with his farts begat little men, and with his fisgs little women; and how Panurge broke a great staff over two glasses
• XXVIII.--How Pantagruel got the victory very strangely over the Dipsodes and the Giants
• XXIX.--How Pantagruel discomfited the three hundred giants armed with free-stone, and Loupgarou their captain
• XXX.--How Epistemon, who had his head cut off, was finely healed by Panurge, and of the news which he brought from the devils, and of the damned people in hell
• XXXI.--How Pantagruel entered into the city of the Amaurots, and how Panurge married King Anarchus to an old lantern-carrying hag, and made him a crier of green sauce
• XXXII.--How Pantagruel with his tongue covered a whole army, and what the author saw in his mouth
• XXXIII.--How Pantagruel became sick, and the manner how he was recovered
• XXXIV.--The conclusion of this present book, and the excuse of the author