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p9ng's review against another edition
4.0
Admittedly I only read Pantagruel. This collection is over 1000 pages. Entertaining. A bit slow going. The kind of reading that requires a dictionary. The translator is fabulous.
spaceisavacuum's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Ecco lo fico, behold the fig!! 🥝 I have quaffed too much of the Septembral juices, 🥤 I fear, of a parchmental thirst, I may drink only so much as a sponge. 🧽 Prior of this Rabelaisian folly gratifying my lusty cup of an equinoctial deterging by reason that the leaves fall from the trees in the autumnal quarter.. Then, that mower shows over in solstice. To say the least, I was considerable entertainable.
I didn’t believe a word of it was false. All of it was true.
“I have of a long time known you to be a great lover of peregrination, desirous still to learn new things, and still to see what you had never seen before.”
I began thinking of the microcosm of flies, while they pick over all the good bacteria floating about space-time and tickling at my ivory skin as in ivory dreams. So annoying to wake up with a fly, cause you’re half-awake and half-asleep but you’re half-slapping yourself. Better not to be half-calf or half-staft. Invisible forms envelope the infinode- uncountable microlode of everything. Blood, for example; I wrote a poem about this.
“Life consisteth in blood; blood is the seat of the soul; therefore the chiefest work of the microcosm is, to be making blood continually.”
I took leave of my senses, narrowly believing that this moon of ours was really made of green cheese, as the plain are flat so’s the plane sits flat atop two golden Caesarian pillars. 🧀 Cheese enough, at least, let cheese be the end of all things. Rabelais tried to pull the noose around my neck and coin this their own weed ‘the good herb’ Pantagruelion, which take properties of linen and hemp, being as Asbeston and noncombustible.
Gargantua and Pentagruel was a really absurd story and triumphantly writ, from the magician of linguistics and sempiternal wit fit for endemic French kidders and gigglers. Now a favorite for my year, in my atmosphere of jocularity. It’s too gargantuan to expound upon at length this still it had good things to say about me. 🙊
I didn’t believe a word of it was false. All of it was true.
“I have of a long time known you to be a great lover of peregrination, desirous still to learn new things, and still to see what you had never seen before.”
I began thinking of the microcosm of flies, while they pick over all the good bacteria floating about space-time and tickling at my ivory skin as in ivory dreams. So annoying to wake up with a fly, cause you’re half-awake and half-asleep but you’re half-slapping yourself. Better not to be half-calf or half-staft. Invisible forms envelope the infinode- uncountable microlode of everything. Blood, for example; I wrote a poem about this.
“Life consisteth in blood; blood is the seat of the soul; therefore the chiefest work of the microcosm is, to be making blood continually.”
I took leave of my senses, narrowly believing that this moon of ours was really made of green cheese, as the plain are flat so’s the plane sits flat atop two golden Caesarian pillars. 🧀 Cheese enough, at least, let cheese be the end of all things. Rabelais tried to pull the noose around my neck and coin this their own weed ‘the good herb’ Pantagruelion, which take properties of linen and hemp, being as Asbeston and noncombustible.
Gargantua and Pentagruel was a really absurd story and triumphantly writ, from the magician of linguistics and sempiternal wit fit for endemic French kidders and gigglers. Now a favorite for my year, in my atmosphere of jocularity. It’s too gargantuan to expound upon at length this still it had good things to say about me. 🙊
hungerford's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
estanceveyrac's review against another edition
5.0
Il y a des choses horribles dans ce qu'écrit Rabelais, mais pour autant le livre n'est pas sans valeur, sans intérêt. La baisse de qualité du quatrième livre se confirme et je suis soulagé.e d'avoir enfin fini ma lecture, mais je ne la regrette pas.
cunningba's review against another edition
4.0
The first time I attempted to read this was when I was in high school over 50 years ago. Having seen many blurbs of books I was reading that called the writing Rabelaisian, I, of course, was intrigued and checked the book out from the library. I quickly skimmed some of the scatological humor near the beginning, then quickly got bogged down, bored, and returned the book to library having only read a small piece. However, I always meant to finish reading it sometime and even bought a copy in graduate school that sat on my bookshelves for over 30 years.
This year an enthusiastic Hungarian fan of Rabelais started a buddy read on Goodreads, so I signed up, figuring that if I committed to it and had somebody I might disappoint if I didn't keep up, I could get through it. The main problem reading it is that it's not all just scatology and humor. It is dense with allusions to history, Lucian, Erasmus, Roman historians, Greek and Roman mythology, the Bible, and Reformation inside baseball. When I was in high school, all this was completely over my head. I figured 50+ years later, being a lot more well read, it would be a lot easier. So I pulled down the Burton Raffel translation off my shelf, started in, and bounced right off. The problems were that (1) it was translated into an English that was so archaic that several words on every page broke most of the online dictionaries I could find and (2) there were not enough notes to untangle the many literary allusions in the text.
So, I finally broke down and spent the money to buy the Penguin Classics edition translated and annotated by M.A. Screech. That made all the difference. The notes allowed me to place all the allusions and track down the ones that were of interest. My reading buddy in Hungary also suggested the Mikhail Bakhtin's critical study Rabelais and His World. I still have barely gotten into Bakhtin's book, but I will probably finish it in the near future.
Overall, I was more impressed with the books than I had been in high school. They are quite complex. Much of Rabelais' humor would have been of more interest to 16th century audience. But a lot is quite universal. Parts of the books were a real slog, some because they just droned on and on beating the same dead horse, some because I felt the need to go read some story out of Lucian or the Bible for context. Other parts were delightful and poetic. Book V was the easiest to read, though it's not certain that it was even written by Rabelais, but Pantagruel's voyage seem to presage the latter parts of Gulliver's Travels.
This year an enthusiastic Hungarian fan of Rabelais started a buddy read on Goodreads, so I signed up, figuring that if I committed to it and had somebody I might disappoint if I didn't keep up, I could get through it. The main problem reading it is that it's not all just scatology and humor. It is dense with allusions to history, Lucian, Erasmus, Roman historians, Greek and Roman mythology, the Bible, and Reformation inside baseball. When I was in high school, all this was completely over my head. I figured 50+ years later, being a lot more well read, it would be a lot easier. So I pulled down the Burton Raffel translation off my shelf, started in, and bounced right off. The problems were that (1) it was translated into an English that was so archaic that several words on every page broke most of the online dictionaries I could find and (2) there were not enough notes to untangle the many literary allusions in the text.
So, I finally broke down and spent the money to buy the Penguin Classics edition translated and annotated by M.A. Screech. That made all the difference. The notes allowed me to place all the allusions and track down the ones that were of interest. My reading buddy in Hungary also suggested the Mikhail Bakhtin's critical study Rabelais and His World. I still have barely gotten into Bakhtin's book, but I will probably finish it in the near future.
Overall, I was more impressed with the books than I had been in high school. They are quite complex. Much of Rabelais' humor would have been of more interest to 16th century audience. But a lot is quite universal. Parts of the books were a real slog, some because they just droned on and on beating the same dead horse, some because I felt the need to go read some story out of Lucian or the Bible for context. Other parts were delightful and poetic. Book V was the easiest to read, though it's not certain that it was even written by Rabelais, but Pantagruel's voyage seem to presage the latter parts of Gulliver's Travels.
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!