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i_have_no_process's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
relaxing
slow-paced
5.0
The fact that I think this is the funniest book ever written indubitably says more about me than it does the text.
aribook's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
richard_f's review against another edition
3.0
Baudy, funny, interesting and quite contemporary. Enjoy the adventure!
mariavagovicova's review against another edition
3.0
Well. I seriously dont know what to think about this book. First it was funny. Then it was too much and then good again and then stupid I just could not handle it, I did not even finish it. I see the reason why this is such an important book but for me as a person its just not worth the time.
musicdeepdive's review against another edition
4.75
I unashamedly found this whole thing hilariously witty, even with (read: maybe because of) Rabelais' propensity for phallic, gross humor. Irreverent to the nth degree, sharp enough to back it up - a fabulously entertaining combination in any era.
mrcreighton's review against another edition
5.0
I can't claim to have read all of it, but I'm pretty certain I won't read anything filthier, funnier or as curiously life affirming. Operates from a position I guess is the opposite of Olympian, down amongst the filth, fluids and fury, but the disdain is the same, and the conviction that we are ridiculous little creatures with foolish and damaging passions. There's a lot of joy in it though.
breadandmushrooms's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.25
toochicforsoup's review against another edition
2.0
Occasionally humorous but people drowning in rivers of the protagonist’s excrement multiple times was perhaps a bit excessive. 2/10.
wille44's review against another edition
2.5
Rabelais casts a long literary shadow, stretching to Cervantes to Sterne and Swift and even as far as Joyce and Pynchon. One of the first to commingle high and low satire, bawdy humor with academic commentary, his life's work Gargantua and Pantagruel are fascinating to return to. They retain a real joy and vivacity, but the transgressive nature of their humor has dulled with time and iteration. A large percentage of these stories' humor is scatalogical in nature, and your mileage may vary but I quickly hit a point of diminishing returns with characters pooping and peeing all over themselves and everyone else.
The stories of the two giants vary wildly from book to book, while Pantagruel's first book is a rowdy satire of knights tales, the third book is a much more restrained, "intellectual" satire of marriage and cultural norms of the medieval era in which the book was written. Regardless of the books' individual focus, across the board Rabelais is juxtaposing the erudition and constriction of the medieval upper classes with the squalor and revelry of the lower, while satirizing the lot of them. He targets academics of the time, royalty, and medieval culture at large.
The struggle for the contemporary reader is to grasp his academic wordplay, jokes, and references. They are numerous and clever, but for my reading completely unintelligible without consulting the numerous foot and end notes of my edition. Unfortunately having to research the majority of his jokes drains them of humor and grinds the flow of reading to halt, as I lack the background knowledge of the 1530s literary scene needed to laugh along with Rabelais. This leaves me with only his poop jokes, which are numerous, but which I was tired of by the second book.
It's a shame, as a result I feel I can only really enjoy Gargantua and Pantagruel from an almost archeological point of view. I unearth the stories, read them, and research enough to comprehend how clever and fun they are, but in the process the life and humor of the book is lost on me, by dissecting it to comprehend it I have killed it in the process for myself. If nothing else Gargantua and Pantagruel are still lively, bawdy, and outrageous as ever, but outside of this surface level humor it takes a preexisting historical grounding in medieval culture and scholarship to really engage fully with the book and understand the depths of it's satire and commentary.
The stories of the two giants vary wildly from book to book, while Pantagruel's first book is a rowdy satire of knights tales, the third book is a much more restrained, "intellectual" satire of marriage and cultural norms of the medieval era in which the book was written. Regardless of the books' individual focus, across the board Rabelais is juxtaposing the erudition and constriction of the medieval upper classes with the squalor and revelry of the lower, while satirizing the lot of them. He targets academics of the time, royalty, and medieval culture at large.
The struggle for the contemporary reader is to grasp his academic wordplay, jokes, and references. They are numerous and clever, but for my reading completely unintelligible without consulting the numerous foot and end notes of my edition. Unfortunately having to research the majority of his jokes drains them of humor and grinds the flow of reading to halt, as I lack the background knowledge of the 1530s literary scene needed to laugh along with Rabelais. This leaves me with only his poop jokes, which are numerous, but which I was tired of by the second book.
It's a shame, as a result I feel I can only really enjoy Gargantua and Pantagruel from an almost archeological point of view. I unearth the stories, read them, and research enough to comprehend how clever and fun they are, but in the process the life and humor of the book is lost on me, by dissecting it to comprehend it I have killed it in the process for myself. If nothing else Gargantua and Pantagruel are still lively, bawdy, and outrageous as ever, but outside of this surface level humor it takes a preexisting historical grounding in medieval culture and scholarship to really engage fully with the book and understand the depths of it's satire and commentary.