Doctor François Rabelais: Pantagruel and health

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This article is based on prolonged reading of Gargantua and Pantagruel rather than on the extensive body of writing concerning Rabelais and his life and works. That there will be no reference to secondary sources does not mean that such work has not been read extensively and with profit, and in varying degrees assimilated or rejected. I take this opportunity of expressing a debt of gratitude to many persons who have discussed Rabelaisian problems with me, and assisted in many ways over the last thirty years, in particular the late Henry Schuman of New York, Professor Gilbert Chinard of Princeton, and Professor M. A. Screech of University College, London. Naturally the following interpretation of Rabelais is my own, even if it coincides in part with other views. Furthermore, it should be noted that I have not taken the Fifth Book into consideration in this survey, for it is at best only partially authentic. Which chapters in it were written by Rabelais is uncertain, and where they should be fitted into the chronology of his life or the context of the total production can never be established with assurance. Like a few other chapters of the four books of 1532–1552, they can have little to do with the chief lines of the argument presented here.

Notes

This article is based on prolonged reading of Gargantua and Pantagruel rather than on the extensive body of writing concerning Rabelais and his life and works. That there will be no reference to secondary sources does not mean that such work has not been read extensively and with profit, and in varying degrees assimilated or rejected. I take this opportunity of expressing a debt of gratitude to many persons who have discussed Rabelaisian problems with me, and assisted in many ways over the last thirty years, in particular the late Henry Schuman of New York, Professor Gilbert Chinard of Princeton, and Professor M. A. Screech of University College, London. Naturally the following interpretation of Rabelais is my own, even if it coincides in part with other views. Furthermore, it should be noted that I have not taken the Fifth Book into consideration in this survey, for it is at best only partially authentic. Which chapters in it were written by Rabelais is uncertain, and where they should be fitted into the chronology of his life or the context of the total production can never be established with assurance. Like a few other chapters of the four books of 1532–1552, they can have little to do with the chief lines of the argument presented here.