/lit/ - Literature

>>14745394
Tell me why I should read this without ONCE using the word 'poop'.

>>14745403
It builds off of the wealth of literature left behind by the Greek and Romans. Besides being a humorous work, it has deep philosophical and esoteric meaning should the reader be attentive and knowledgeable enough.
One of the greatest pieces from the Renaissance, comparable to a laughing Homer.

>>14745394
We tried.

uh oh stinky :D

>>14745403
Okay, I'll give it a shot. Almost all the elements which are united in Rabelais' style are known from the later Middle Ages. The coarse jokes, the creatural concept of the human body, the lack of modesty and reserve in sexual matters, the mixture of such a realism with a satiric or didactic content, the immense fund of unwieldy and sometimes abstruse erudition, the employment of allegorical figures in the later books - all these and much else are to be found in the later Middle Ages. And one might be tempted to think that the only new thing in Rabelais is the degree to which he exaggerates them and the extraordinary way in which he mingles them. But this would be to miss the essence of the matter. The way in which these elements are exaggerated and intertwined produces a new picture. Moreover, Rabelais' purpose, as is well known, is diametrically opposed to medieval ways of thinking: this gives even the individual elements a different meaning. Late medieval works are confined within a definite frame, socially, geographically, cosmologically, religiously, and ethically; they present but one aspect of things at a time; where they have to deal with a multiplicity of things and aspects, they attempt to force them into the definite frame of a general order. But Rabelais' entire effort is directed toward playing with things and the multiplicity of their possible aspects; upon tempting the reader out of his customary and definite way of regarding things, by showing him phenomena in utter confusion; upon tempting him out into the great ocean of the world, in which he can swim freely, though it be at his own peril. The revolutionary thing about his way of thinking is not his opposition to Christianity, but the freedom of vision, feeling, and thought which his perpetual playing with things produces, and which invites the reader to deal directly with the world and its wealth of phenomena.

>>14745445
Ah, sounds really exciting! Damn, I wasn't expecting to be convinced, but you've done it. I do have a copy of it already, and I've been "meaning" to read it for a while, so I will try to read it after my current reads.

>>14745445
>the freedom of vision, feeling, and thought which his perpetual playing with things produces, and which invites the reader to deal directly with the world and its wealth of phenomena.
Reminds me of Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Montaigne, Cervantes, Sterne, Melville

>>14745445
Haven't seen an effortpost of this quality in some time. Good job anon.

What's the best translation?

>>14745445
All right lads, which edition should I get?

>>14746792

>>14746799

>>14746792
Rabelais is the first writer of the age of print. Just as Luther is the last writer of the manuscript age. Of course, without print Luther would have remained a simple heretical monk. Print made Luther the power he became, but essentially he was a preacher, not a writer. He knew his audience and wrote for it. Rabelais, though, understood what this new miracle of print meant for the writer. It meant you had gained the world and lost your audience. You no longer knew who was reading you or why. You no longer knew who you were writing for or even why you were writing. Rabelais raged at this and laughed at it and relished it, all at the same time.

Rabelais is the first author in history to find the idea of authority ridiculous. For one thing he no longer felt he belonged to any tradition that could support or guide him. He could admire Virgil and Homer, but what had they to do with him? Homer was the bard of the community. He sang about the past and made it present to those who listened. Virgil, to the satisfaction of the Emperor Augustus, made himself the bard of the new Roman Empire. He wove its myths about the past together in heart-stopping verse and so gave legitimacy to the colonisation and subjugation of a large part of the peninsula. But Rabelais? If enough people bought his books he could make a living out of writing. But he was the spokesman of no one but himself. And that meant that his role was inherently absurd. No one had called him. Not God. Not the Muses. Not the monarch. Not the local community. He was alone in his room, scribbling away, and then these scribbles were transformed into print and read by thousands of people whom he'd never set eyes on and who had never set eyes on him, people in all walks of life, reading him in the solitude of their rooms.

And yet the funny thing is that he wants to do nothing other than scribble away in his room.

Haven't writers always written alone in their rooms?

Of course. Ever since writing was invented. But even if Chaucer wrote alone in his room we know he read wha the had written aloud to the court. Dante no doubt composed in the quiet of his study, but, like the stonecarvers of the cathedrals, he devised his work first and foremost for God. And, from the beginning he wrote his poetry to be performed in public.

Didn't other writers of Rabelais' time feel the same as he did?

Perhaps they did, he says, But it doesn't show in their work. The poets still wrote for each other and for their patrons. Shakespeare wrote for an audience he knew and could see every day. Rabelais invented modern prose fiction. And no one really understood what he was up to for the next four hundred years, except for a few kindred spirits like Cervantes and Sterne. I want to make our culture aware of what he sensed and how he responded to the crisis of his time, which is also the crisis of our time.

>>14746497
>>14746547
Everyman library edition has the best translation

>>14745394
When I was in highschool my teacher would teach us outside sometimes and we read this in French under the sun it’s a nice memory desu

>>14748140
That does sound nice. Are you French?