Gargantua And Pantagruel

The narrator praises the readers as noblemen and knights who, in the company of fair ladies, read romances and epics as earnestly as they should study the Holy Bible. An example of a romance favored by readers is the Great and Inestimable Chronicles of the Great Giant Gargantua (a chapbook of Rabelais’s time, though not written by him). Inspired by the power of this epic, the narrator wants to tell more of the story of Gargantua. Every word in the story is true. If the narrator lies to the reader, may he be tortured by demons, and if the reader doubts the veracity of the narrator, may they get “the clap” (syphilis).

In the manner of great historians and of Saint Matthew who wrote a book of the Bible, the narrator must recount the antecedents of Pantagruel. It all began when the spilled blood of Abel (murdered by his brother Cain) made the land breed “fat medlars” (medlar is a pun on meddler, as well as a reference to a fruit resembling female genitalia). People ate the medlars, which made them bulge out in “monstrous” shapes, some becoming long in body.