Huge, gigantic, enormous, voracious or insatiable, this colourful adjective derives from the character in the pioneering 16th-century French prose writer François Rabelais’s multiple volume work, Gargantua and Pantagruel. Often regarded as an early form of novel, the tales relate the adventures of the giant Gargantua and his son Pantagruel, in a style often humorous, adventurous and erudite, festive, ecumenical, wildly fantastic and excessive, but also satirical, they capture many contradictory sides of the author – the ecclesiastical and anticlerical, the puritan and the hedonistic, with Rabelais known to having been a Catholic and a freethinker, a humanist, a doctor and a bon vivant. The Prologue to Gargantua the narrator addresses the: “Most illustrious drinkers, and you the most precious pox-ridden—for to you and you alone are my writings dedicated ...” And later lines such as “We all engage in things forbidden and yearn for things denied,” and “I perceive I will die confected in the very stench of farts”.
Here then is a short selection of mostly obscure songs and music inspired by Rabelais’s character, and the word from folk, to prog to classical, medieval, experimental pop and beyond:
Feel free to share anything more in relation to the pantagruelian, gargantuan or general giant, whether in music or wider culture, such as from film, art, or other contexts, in comments below.
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