Gargantua

Gargantua (1534/1535) by François Rabelais (ca. 1494–1553) is the first (and most famous) part of the pentalogy about the giants Gargantua and Pantagruel. This edition by Matica Hrvatska brings the first complete translation of the book into Croatian, independently - later Pantagruel was published in 1996, the other books in 1997–1998, and the whole in 2004.

The novel begins with the genealogy and birth of Gargantua (from the ear of his mother Gargamela after an enormous feast), his childhood full of grotesque episodes (drinking rivers of wine, enormous quantities of food), then his poor scholastic upbringing in Paris (a satire on medieval education) and the transition to humanistic education under Ponocrates. It culminates in a war against King Picrochol (a parody of modern wars), where Gargantua fights victoriously, and the reward is the founding of the utopian monastery of Teljem – "Do what you will" (Fay ce que vouldras), where freedom, education and harmony are the opposite of ascetic monasticism.

Rabelais's style is furious, exuberant, full of vulgarisms, puns, lists, parodies of the Bible, ancient authors and medieval genres. Grotesque bodies (giant functions, eating, sex) serve to satire the Church, belligerence, scholasticism and social norms of the Renaissance. The work is humanistic, optimistic, celebrates life, knowledge and freedom, but also cynically mocks hypocrisy. Maras's translation is commendable for preserving the rhythm, humour and linguistic inventiveness of the original.