Smoke, sound, and murder in sixteenth-century Paris 1

François Rabelais (1483–1553), Franciscan priest, humanist, physician, advisor to cardinals, rebel, and novelist, wrote among other things Gargantua (1535), Pantagruel (1532), The Third Book, The Fourth Book (1552), and The Fifth Book, a posthumous and perhaps partly genuine compilation (1564). Within these works his writing ranges from coarse caricature to pedagogical pining. He exposed the foibles of humans and human society. His satire was so biting that the University of Paris, supported by the parlement of Paris, the country’s highest court, placed Gargantua and Pantagruel on a list of prohibited books in 1545. The next year, he defiantly published The Third Book.