{"product_id":"2026100012924-secondhand-gargantua-pantagruel","title":"Gargantua \u0026 Pantagruel","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Yellowed\u003cbr\u003eMarkings: Previous owner\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew works in the Western canon match the anarchic brilliance and riotous ambition of François Rabelais's Gargantua \u0026amp; Pantagruel, a sprawling Renaissance masterpiece that chronicles the fantastical adventures of two giant kings — father Gargantua and son Pantagruel — across a world brimming with absurdity, carnivalesque excess, and savage wit. Written across five books in 16th-century France, the saga follows these colossal figures through epic battles, philosophical debates, and bawdy misadventures, all rendered in Rabelais's astonishing linguistic inventiveness that stretches the French language to its very limits. The narrative presents a dazzling tapestry of parody, satire, and humanist idealism, skewering the Church, scholasticism, and political tyranny with gleeful irreverence while simultaneously celebrating the life of the mind, the pleasures of the body, and the boundless potential of the human spirit.\n\nA cornerstone of world literature, Gargantua \u0026amp; Pantagruel is at once a product of its tumultuous Renaissance era and a work of startling, timeless modernity — its influence traceable in the work of Voltaire, Swift, Joyce, and Pynchon. Rabelais writes with the authority of a man who was himself a monk, physician, and scholar, infusing the text with genuine erudition even as he buries it beneath layers of comic irreverence and linguistic play. This Penguin Classics edition brings this monument of satire to a new generation of readers, and one question lingers long after the final page: how seriously should we take a writer who insists, above all else, on never being taken seriously?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50948308074715,"sku":"2026100012924-SECONDHAND","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/d295a83d-ed64-4bd5-bb32-146a145c7af0.png?v=1793104380","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100012924-secondhand-gargantua-pantagruel","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}