Francois Rabelais (1494? - 1553),
French humorist and satirist. The
word "Rabelaisian" has been applied to the
type of
broad and
coarse humor which fills his works. His greatest
work, Gargantua and Pantagruel, relates the adventures of Gargantua, a giant with a n enormous appetite and his son Pantagruel, the "
king of drunkards." The book is a sort of
burlesque of
politics,
education and the church as they existed in his
time. Rabelais was in his own way a
philosopher who disagreed with the hidebound customs of his
day. His books expressed his
ideals of free and joyous
living and ridiculed the strict principles of
living taught by the church.
—PDC Volume 7 Approved Glossary