91 pages 3 hours read

François Rabelais, Transl. Thomas Urquhart

Gargantua And Pantagruel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1564

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Important Quotes

Quotation Mark Icon

“Alas, Badebec, my sweeting, my beloved, my quim so little and lovely’— hers covered three acres and two square poles though—‘my tenderling, my codpiece, my slippers, my slip-on: never again shall I see you!”


(Book 1, Chapter 3, Page 25)

Gargantua’s lament at Badebec’s death shows Rabelais’s signature mix of the serious and the scandalous. The grieving widower remembers his wife as his “codpiece” (since she covered his genitals) and, in an aside, notes her private parts were over three-acres big. He also laments his son becoming motherless. In this context, humor is a way to negotiate loss and make peace with the unacceptable fact of death.

Quotation Mark Icon

“Then he entered Avignon, where he was barely three days before he fell in love, for (it being a papal domain) the women there enjoy playing at squeeze-crupper.”


(Book 1, Chapter 5, Page 32)

This bawdy description of Pantagruel in university is a satire on The Development of Education as well as a dig at staunch Catholicism. Avignon being a papal domain, the women there are lascivious. A “squeeze-crupper” is the back part of the saddle that holds a horse’s harness in place; the reference here is to the women “riding” Pantagruel during sex.

Quotation Mark Icon

“I intend and will that you acquire a perfect command of languages—first Greek (as Quintilian wishes), secondly Latin, and then Hebrew for the Holy Scriptures, as well as Chaldaean and Arabic likewise—and that, for your Greek, you mould your style by imitating Plato, and for your Latin, Cicero.”


(Book 1, Chapter 8, Page 48)

This passage satirizes The Development of Education by poking fun at the excesses of the humanist educational ideal. Pantagruel is supposed to achieve a “perfect command” of at least five languages and, what is more, to model his own styles in Greek and Latin after Plato and Cicero—two of the most famous stylists in the classical world.

Related Titles

By these authors