Pantagruel's Birth
After Gargantua took his father's throne, it was his turn to set about begetting and raising a child. At a comically enormous age, given in the book as a jumble of numbers, he fathered a son, Pantagruel, by his wife Badebec, who died in giving birth to the child. In that situation Gargantua "wept like a cow" for his wife and "laughed like a calf" at his sturdy son. Pantagruel, of gigantic proportions, grew quickly. Once, at a meal, he swallowed a man whole by mistake, so that later they had to remove him by a kind of mining operation from the depths of the young giant's digestive tract.
Gargantua's Letter
After Pantagruel went to Paris for higher studies, Gargantua wrote him a letter that carries the unique scent of the Renaissance. He says that although his late father Grangousier had made every effort to equip him with all political knowledge and mental perfection, and that his own labor in acquiring learning had reached and even exceeded his father's wish, nevertheless, as Pantagruel can well understand, in that time conditions were not as favorable for study as today. The clouds of ignorance darkened everything then, and the baleful experience of the Goths had embittered every palate, since that people, wherever they set foot, destroyed all high literature, which by God's grace had regained its former brilliance and splendor in his own reign. Yet so great, he adds, is the growth of general learning now that he would hardly be admitted to the first class of a boys' secondary school.
Now men's minds are adorned with every sort of discipline, the old learning, silent for long ages, is lit again, and the languages of the cultured peoples have recovered their early purity: Greek (without which it is shameful for anyone to call himself learned), Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean and Latin. The art of printing is also in use, so accurate and elegant that nothing better can be imagined.
His intention, he writes, is that Pantagruel learn the languages perfectly and keep every event of history present in memory. In the liberal arts of geometry, arithmetic and music he taught him the elements when a child; let him go forward in them. In astronomy let him study all its laws but have nothing to do with astrology, which is nothing but plain deception and nonsense. As to civil law, he wants him to know all the legal texts by heart and to be able to apply them to philosophy. He wants natural matters properly investigated; Pantagruel must not neglect close study of the works of Greek, Arab and Latin physicians, nor look with contempt on Talmudists and cabalists; and by frequent dissection he should gain full knowledge of the little world, or microcosm, that is man. At certain hours of the day he should turn his mind to the Bible: first the New Testament in Greek, then the Old in Hebrew.
But since, as wise Solomon says, wisdom does not enter a malicious mind and knowledge without conscience is the ruin of the soul, it is his duty to serve God and to hold love and fear of Him in his heart, to be kind to all neighbors and love them as himself, to honor his teachers, to turn away from the company of those he does not wish to resemble, and never to receive the gifts and favors of God in vain and leave them unrepaid. And when he knows he has mastered all the knowledge that can be gained in the world beyond, he should come back to his father's arms, so that Gargantua may see him and bless him before he dies. "Your father, Gargantua."
Panurge, the True Hero
Pantagruel studied with great diligence and learned several languages, and had he not happened to meet Panurge he might have turned out one of those "bookworms." Here, as with Friar John, and even more so, a secondary character in the story is drawn far more vividly and brilliantly than the main hero, as Sancho Panza sometimes shines more than Don Quixote.
Rabelais, who in Gargantua and Pantagruel does not find sufficient room for his unrestrained jesting and boisterous play with words, needs a person like Panurge, one part rogue, one part lawyer, one part poet and one part philosopher, to carry his comic and satirical material. He describes Panurge (the name means "ready to do anything") as "a cat starving to death": walking very cautiously, "as if on eggs"; a bold man, a little lecherous, and "afflicted with a kind of disease ... called want of money"; a true pickpocket, "a dissolute, deceitful, drunken ne'er-do-well ... a thoroughly corrupt fellow," yet "beyond all that, the best and most virtuous man in the world" (Book 2, chs. 14 and 16). Rabelais pours out his rudest jokes through the mouth of such a creature.
Panurge particularly disliked the custom of Parisian women of fastening the bodice in front and buttoning it up the back, and he brought the women to trial for this sin and was nearly condemned himself; but he threatened that if so, he would apply the same custom to men's undergarments, whereupon the court ruled that women should leave the front of their garments slightly open, but enough to admit approach (Book 2, ch. 17). Once, scorned by a lady, he bore a grudge, and in revenge played a nasty trick on her in the church where she knelt at her prayers, so that when she came out, all the male dogs of Paris, 600,014 of them, followed her eagerly in a crowd (Book 2, chs. 21 and 22). Even Pantagruel himself, with all his princely dignity, took refuge in this low rascal to relieve the weariness of philosophical study, and took him along on every journey.
Marriage and the Heavenly Council
When the story, strolling along, reaches the Third Book, Panurge debates with himself and others whether it is wise to marry. He lists his arguments for and against over a hundred pages, some cheerful and most tedious; in these pages the reader meets a man who deliberately chooses a mute wife, and a famous judge who reaches his fairest judgments by tossing dice. In the prologue to the Fourth Book Rabelais, imitating Lucian, describes the "high council of the gods" in heaven, in which Jupiter complains of heavenly chaos reigning on earth, thirty wars raging at once, nations hating each other, discord between religions, and the syllogisms of philosophers: "What are we to do with this Ramus and Galland, who have thrown Paris into intellectual strife?" Priapus advises Jupiter to turn those two "Peters" into "stones," and here Rabelais has borrowed the pun from the Bible.
The Voyage to the Holy Bottle
Back on earth, Rabelais devotes the Fourth and Fifth Books to the long voyages and strange travels of Pantagruel. With Panurge and Friar John, in the royal fleet of Utopia, they set out in search of the "Temple of the Holy Bottle" to ask whether Panurge should marry. After some twenty adventures, in the course of which Rabelais mocks Lent, Protestants who hate the pope, bigoted partisans of the pope, the monastic orders, dealers in false antiquities, lawyers ("furred cats"), scholastic philosophers and historians, the travelers reach the temple. Over the temple gate is a Greek inscription meaning: "Truth is in wine." In the fountain near the temple a bottle is submerged, and a gurgling voice, like the word "drink," comes out of it; the priestess Bacbuc interprets the voice to mean that wine is the best philosophy and that "not laughing but drinking ... cool and pleasant wine ... is what distinguishes man from other animals."
Panurge is delighted to see that what he had always known is confirmed by heavenly revelation, and resolves to eat, drink and marry, and to bear the consequences like a man. He sings the "nuptial song" in a loud voice and with shameless words, and then Bacbuc dismisses the travelers with a blessing: "I pray that the intellectual sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere, and whom we call God, may keep you under His providential protection" (Book 5, ch. 47). Thus, with that mixture of coarseness and philosophy peculiar to Rabelais's pen, this great story ends.