Rabelais Publishes Pantagruel

1532

A defrocked French monk turned physician named Francois Rabelais published the comic adventures of the giant Pantagruel, crammed with Latin puns, bodily humor, and satire of scholastic theology. The Sorbonne condemned it at once. Readers could not get enough. His scatological prose created a literary voice so distinctive that rabelaisian entered both French and English as a term for bawdy excess.