Rabelais Gargantua & Pantagruel

Sui Generis  Rabelais’ books look like installments of a novel, but really defies classification [like nothing else].  Critical interpretations [two opposite views] expression of a comic genius concerned purely with entertainment for its own sake deeply-felt philosophical and religious messages  Rabelais was in constant danger from powerful opponents who explicitly condemned his works for the religious and political ideas which they expressed.

Literacy  By 1532 literacy was no longer just for the aristocratic and the highly educated.  Main market was the rising merchant class Popular fiction was mostly made up of sensationalized prose versions of medieval epics and romances, replete with knights, damsels in distress, giants, magic, and sex. Prospective buyers would have seen a story about giants, ensuring sales, but they got much more!  So popular were these genres that they were already being parodied [as does Rabelais & Cervantes]

Satire & Parody  Satire is a verbal or visual mode of expression that uses ridicule to diminish its subject in the eyes of its audience. The authors are intent on making fun of the absurdity, pretension and degeneracy of the respective worlds they are portraying [usually the society they are currently living in].  Parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art [like a sonnet or romance novel] in order to ridicule it. When the conventions of a genre have become defined, authors often lampoon these conventions, making the reader laugh.

Humanism  philosophical and literary movement that centers on humans and their values, capacities, and worth  emphasis on classical studies and a conscious return to classical ideals and forms as a result of the rediscovery and study of the literature, art, and civilization of ancient Greece and Rome. formal education very highly valued  often a search for a utopian society where all are treated well and with dignity