The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Volume One [1] (The 25th Anniversary Edition of The Great Books of the Western World)

347 pp. Original dark green full leather, gilt titles and decorations, all edges gilt, silk moire endpapers, ribbon marker bound in. Includes illustrations from engravings by Gustave Dore. This edition was produced as the first of two volumes for The 25th Anniversary Edition of The Great Books of the Western World. "Parodying everyone from classic authors to his own contemporaries, the dazzling and exuberant stories of Rabelais expose human follies with mischievous and often obscene humor. Gargantua depicts a young giant who becomes a cultured Christian knight. Pantagruel portrays Gargantua's bookish son who becomes a Renaissance Socrates, divinely guided by wisdom and by his idiotic, self-loving companion, Panurge." "Francois Rabelais (c. 1494 – April 9, 1553) was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor and Renaissance humanist. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, and both bawdy jokes and songs."