Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book IV

François Rabelais

Read by Thomas A. Copeland

(5 stars; 2 reviews)

This fourth in the five novels about the giants Pantagruel and his father Gargantua is the last novel indusputably attributed to François Rabelais. Seeking an answer to doubts arising in the previous novel, Pantagruel and his friends go to sea to find an oracle (the Holy Bottle). Their adventures provide many opportunities for satire, the most effective being against intolerance, credulity, and cowardice, with Pantagruel himself always affording a calm center of sanity and equilibrium. As the sea and the islands teem with monsters and madmen, so the style erupts: Nearly endless lists tumble out, nonsense words of 20-30 syllables challenge the tongue and baffle the mind, and recondite learning spills with hilarity onto the page. The author's imagination appears to explode with jokes, nonsense, flights of fancy, frivolities, and fun, held loosely together by a set of well-defined characters and a silly quest. (Summary by Thomas A. Copeland) (7 hr 7 min)