Gargantua And Pantagruel

The Fourth Book of Pantagruel is almost entirely comprised of the sea voyage that Pantagruel, Panurge, and their friends undertake to seek the Oracle of the Dive Bouteille.

A parody of Homer’s Odyssey, the voyage includes stops at several islands, mostly Greek in name, such as Medamothi, which in Greek means “nowhere.” Supernatural and fable-like elements predominate, such as the giant Bringuenarilles in Chapter 17, and are used for allegorical representation. Rabelais’s use of allegory comes to the fore in this chapter, beginning with the story of the land of Procuration, in Chapter 12. Its people, the Procurees and Chicanous are a thinly-veiled reference to lawyers and legal agents who procure legal permits through wrangling and practice chicanery. Since such agents were universally disliked in Rabelais’s time for serving legal notices and extracting money, the Chicanous are subjected to much cruelty in this section.

The type of comedy derived from the beatings of the Chicanous is the comedy of cruelty. The Chicanous are first dehumanized—significantly, the individuals are not given names—and then painted as people who are asking for a beating, which makes the violence again them seem cartoonish. However, the exaggerated, mocking descriptions of violence do not undercut its severity, with one of the Chicanous being described as standing there “all battered and bruised, with one eye poached in black butter, eight fractured ribs […] and his lower jaw in three pieces” (708). The text is aware that such comedy may seem un-Christian, which is why Pantagruel, the protagonist, declares it is not funny.

Book 4 being a voyage, the text offers characters the opportunity to grow, discover, and change. In literature, the journey is a classical trope that tests characters, which is why Pantagruel and especially Panurge display sides of their characters not seen before. Pantagruel increasingly withdraws into the background, like a benevolent king who comes to the fore only when matters are pressing. Panurge, meanwhile, is tested by uncertainty and danger, showing his fearful, passive side, foreshadowed by his indecision in Book 3. Panurge’s actions during the storm show him in an unflattering light and are mined for comedy. In Chapter 18, he blubbers: “I’m drowning. Zalas, ha, ha, ha, ha […] be, be bous, bous […]” (721). This Panurge is almost unrecognizable from the trickster Panurge of Book 1. Unlike the changes in Pantagruel’s character—which are consistent with his growing from an exuberant youth to a benevolent, wise ruler—the shifts in Panurge’s character are more abrupt and do not reflect much maturing.

Stylistically, one of the significant developments in Book 4 is the narrator’s use of the self-referential “we” during his storytelling. It becomes obvious that the narrator now speaks from the point-of-view of an omniscient crew member on the ship, who does not just narrate the happenings, but participates in them. It is unclear why Rabelais adopts this shift in point-of-view, but the effect is that of simulated authenticity, perhaps as a parody of the first-person travel narratives that became popular in the Renaissance. Since the narrator has witnessed all these events up close, the narration is purportedly all the truer and more reliable. The assurance of authenticity is important, since the events the narrator describes from Book 4 onward are increasingly more fantastical. Among other things, there is an entire island that lives in tapestries, talking squirrel-like people, and people who are lanterns.

The Prologue of Book 4 is the longest in the pentalogy. The Prologue is a showcase for Rabelais’s humanism, in which classical and “pagan” knowledge is as valuable as Christian tenets. The faith that the Prologue conveys is a liberal Christianity that does not try to erase its links with “pagan” history and literature, but celebrates and improves them. Rabelais first tells the biblical story of the son of a prophet in Israel whose prayer to God is answered because it is right and moderate. Rabelais then shifts to a story from Aesop that features Jupiter, the Roman king of the gods, and imparts the same lesson of staying in the “Golden Mean”—or moderate balance between true extremes. This blending of Christian and ancient learning once more reflects The Development of Education in Rabelais’s day and the intellectual values of humanism.