Rabelais, Rabelaisian

[alice malice]

On this day in 1553 the French monk, physician, humanist scholar and
writer, Francois Rabelais died. His influential and much-imitated
satiric masterpiece, Gargantua and Pantagruel (five books, 1532-52) is
in the mock-quest tradition, with the emphasis decidedly on the
'mock.' The author's lampoon of religious orders, lawyers, Sorbonne
pedants and just about every other power-group going brought
condemnation and censorship in the author's lifetime; modern readers
marvel more at the style, that exuberant combination of humor, sex and
scatology now deemed "Rabelaisian." This is easily and most often
illustrated through the chapter devoted to the search for the ideal
toilet paper (conclusion: the neck of a goose, well-downed), but
almost any passage will do.

http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=4/9/2014
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l