Introduction

When the giant Gargantua is born, he does not cry but shouts 'Drink! Drink!', and needs seventeen thousand nine hundred and thirteen cows to supply his milk. At first he is taught by scholastic tutors and grows ever more foolish, until a humanist master teaches him all knowledge; riding his giant mare to Paris, he takes the great bells of Notre-Dame to hang round its neck. He defeats the warlike King Picrochole and builds for Friar John, who helped him, the Abbey of Thélème, whose only rule is 'Do what you will.' His son Pantagruel is a giant too, and in Paris meets the witty, cunning Panurge. With exuberant, earthy and learned laughter Rabelais mocks scholastic education, religious fanaticism and war, and celebrates human nature and the thirst for knowledge.