Rabelais, Francois
(ca. 1483–1553)
Author and physician whose satiresGar-
gantuaandPantagruelhave survived as
some of the most celebrated writings of
Renaissance France. Born in the Loire Val-
ley region of Touraine, Rabelais was the
son of a lawyer. As a boy he became a nov-
ice monk and was educated at a Franciscan
monastery and later became secretary to
Geoffrey d’Estissac. He acquired a wide-
ranging knowledge of science, philosophy,
medicine, and ancient Greek and Latin.
After leaving the monastery he trained as
a physician at the University of Montpel-
lier, where he became a lecturer in the clas-
sical medical science of Galen and Hippo-
crates. In 1532 he became a physician in
Lyons, where he also worked as an editor
and translator of Latin works. In the same
year he published the first volume of his
Pantagruel. Two years later appearedGar-
gantua, a work in which the events occur
before those ofPantagrueland which as a
result is always published as the first of
the two volumes.
In fear of the reaction to these satires,
Rabelais signed the works as Alcofrybas
Nasier, an anagram of his name. In his
lengthy novels Rabelais satirized contem-
porary writings as well as the medieval
chivalric romance by describing the outra-
geous history of a family of giants. The
books treat the subjects of religion, war,
and the new humanistic thinking that was
sweeping away medieval habits of mind
and replacing them with the classically in-
spired philosophies of the Renaissance. As
thinly disguised attacks on traditional
scholarship and the intolerance of the
church, Rabelais risked his career as well
as his life by writing at a time when the
Protestant Reformation was sweeping
through central Europe but the Catholic
hierarchy was still firmly in control in
France.
Undaunted by the disapproval of the
authorities, Rabelais continued expanding
his work. In 1546 he brought out aThird
Volume, this time signing his real name to
the book, which suffered immediate con-
demnation from the scholarly authorities
of the University of Paris. This book offers
an account of the character named Pa-
nurge. A fourth volume came out in 1548,
in which Rabelais described the unfortu-
nate Papefigues, who had fallen victim to
the Papimanes—a reference to the tyranny
of the Catholic Papacy.Raleigh, Sir Walter ...........................
(1552–1618)
Explorer and historian who helped to es-
tablish the first English settlement in
North America, helping England to stake
its future claim to colonies on the conti-
nent. He was the son of a country squire
who owned an estate in Devonshire near
Plymouth, a harbor on the English Chan-
nel. Although he was sent to Oxford for
university studies, he left a short time later
and then enlisted with a company of En-
glish infantry fighting alongside the French
Huguenots (Protestants) on the continent