Rabelais, critic of his time

Ecclesiastic and anticlerical, Christian and humanist, physician and bon vivant, Rabelais’ personality had many contradictory facets. Caught up in the religious and political turmoil of the Reformation, he was a sensitive critic of the major issues of his time. His major works, Pantagruel and Gargantua, published between 1532 and 1564, prefigured the advent of the modern novel. "Vivez joyeux!" he wrote...