It was in Lyon in 1532 that Rabelais published Pantagruel, the first volume of his mock-epic masterpiece. No event in his previous life had suggested that this was the genre in which he would establish his reputation, and his childhood and adolescence also remain comparatively obscure. We know, however, that he had spent several years pursuing a monastic vocation, later abandoned, whereupon, having gained his first medical degree at Montpellier, he settled temporarily in Lyon, working both in the municipal hospital and in the printing industry. It was there that he seems to have helped in the publication, also in 1532, of a small comic text concerning the Gallic folk hero Gargantua, entitled Les Grandes et inestimables …
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Citation: Parkin, John. "Pantagruel". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 November 2010 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2931, accessed 21 November 2024.]
