ABSTRACT
Renaissance Humanist, Franciscan friar, Benedictine monk, Doctor of Medicine and ‘Great Jester of France’, François Rabelais (c.1490-1553?) was the author of La vie, faits & dits Heroiques de Gargantua, & de son filz Pantagruel (Lyon, 1564). A satirical masterpiece with liberal dollops of scatological humour, it tells the irreverent story of Gargantua, his son Pantagruel and their companion Panurge. Gargantua and Pantagruel are giants and in an allusion to the Matthean genealogy of Christ the first book begins with a promised account of how ‘the Giants were born in this world, and how from them by a direct line issued Gargantua’. Similarly, the second book introduces a parody of the Old Testament genealogies:
Acknowledging readers would doubt the veracity of this lineage, ‘seeing at the time of the flood all the world was destroyed, except Noah, and seven persons more with him in the Ark’, Rabelais described how the giant Hurtali survived the deluge. Citing the authority of a rabbinic school known as the Massoretes, ‘good honest fellows, true ballokeering blades, and exact Hebraical bagpipers’, Rabelais explained that Hurtali did not get in the ark (he was too big), but rather sat astride upon it, with ‘one leg on the one side, and another on the other, as little children use to do upon their wooden
horses’. In this manner Hurtali steered the ark away from danger. Appreciative of his good deed those inside sent him up an abundance of food through a chimney.1
