ABSTRACT
Pantagruel catches sight of Panurge on the road, in the distance, and one of literature’s least likely friendships, and most extraordinary travel narratives – first around France, through the many and strange forms of university learning, and then beyond, into the world of epic, the quest, religious polemic, ethical inquiry and romance – begins. A chance encounter on the road transforms a formal, institutional progress towards learning into a narrative of wandering, of error never quite redeemed, and of curiosity translated into character, into unresolved allegoresis, into plot.2
