Rabelais Quiz | Authors

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Where in France is Rabelais's birthplace traditionally situated?

Answer: Chinon

When he enrolls at the University he mentions 'chinonais' as his 'nationality'. His father had a farm at the hamlet of La Deviniere in the village of Seuille, which is very close to Chinon. Usually 1494 is mentioned as his birthyear, but more recent research suggests 1483.

2. We first find Rabelais as a member of a religious community at Puy Saint-Martin near Fontenay-le- Comte. What - at that time - rather traditionalistic religious order is he a member of there?

Answer: Franciscan

In the Renaissance period the Franciscans did not particularly excel by their zeal to follow the new intellectual trends of study of the Antique Latin and Greek texts. Another author who was not on very good terms with the Franciscans was Erasmus.

3. Rabelais was not very happy with the intellectual climate at Fontenay. When his superiors take away his Greek books, he decides to leave the convent. What does he become now?

Answer: He joins the Benedictine Abbey of Maillezais, which was quite near to Fontenay

Among his friends and acquaintances there were various important humanists such as Guillaume Bude who was director of the famous College of France where Latin, Greek and Hebrew were studied. He also had contacts with Desiderius Erasmus, the author of the famous 'Praise of Folly' and Clement Marot a leading protestant.Rabelais is especially lucky in having Cardinal Jean du Bellay, a counsellor of King Francis I , as his friend and protector.

In the winter of 1533-1534 he accompanies du Bellay during a trip to Italy. Probably as a result of that Rabelais will edit for a Lyonnese printer a translation of Marlani's Topography of Ancient Rome.(1534) Also in 1535-1536 he is in Italy with du Bellay. To be a vet or a doctor you first have to get a degree, even in the middle-ages. Declaring yourself an atheist would have been a most unheard of and even very dangerous thing to do in those times. Rabelais' relationship to protestantism was not too positive. Jean Calvin was far from enthusiastic about Rabelais satirical books, which inverted 'the low' and ' the high' in a style which did not agree with Calvin's sense of hierarchy and order.

4. Somewhat later, in 1531, we hear of Rabelais as having become Bachelor of Medicine. What was the famous French University that specialised in medicine?

Answer: Montpellier

Paris was famous for theology and philosophy. Bologna in Italy specialised in law. Montpellier was the place to be for future 'doctors'. The fact that Rabelais is studying medicine is proof that he had broken with his abbey as it was forbidden for monks to cure human bodies by technical means such as 'fire and iron', the original tools of the first surgeons. Before settling at Montpellier Rabelais probably had made the customary tour of various French universities. Apart from Paris and Montpellier, also Orleans, Poitiers and Toulouse are places where Rabelais may have spent some time as a student.That's anyway the university career of his hero Pantagruel.

There is no doubt that Rabelais practised the art of medicine. He also tried his hand at the art of astrology and published a kind of 'horoscope' for the year 1533, which he called a Pantagruelian prognostication 'certaine,veritable et infallible'.

5. When in 1532 Rabelais published his first book 'Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes', he used a pen name. That seems to have been a wise strategy as in October 1533 the Sorbonne censored the book for 'obscenity'.What pseudonym had Rabelais used?

Answer: Alcofribas Nasier

In 1517 Merlin Coccaie had published his ' Macaronies', a story about giants which may have inspired Rabelais. This name was a pseudonym for another Benedictine monk, Teofilo Folengo, who also had run away from his monastery. Geoffroy d' Estissac was the abbot of Fontenay , whose secretary Rabelais had been for a while. Etienne Dolet was a famous printer. Alcofribas Nasier is an anagram of Francois Rabelais. Dipsodes are 'ever-thirsty drinkers'.

6. When young Pantagruel grows up, he goes to Paris for his studies and meets a wonderful character who answers to all his questions in the most diverse languages: German,Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Greek, Latin,etc. Later this 'scholar' becomes Pantagruel's companion in most of his travels. What is his name?

Answer: Panurge

Grandgousier is Pantagruel's granddad. Gargamelle is his grannie. Badebec was Pantagruel's mother. She died in childbirth, a phenomenon Rabelais must have been well-acquainted with in his practice as a doctor.

7. Exaggeration is a characteristic of all Rabelais' works.An example: at every meal Pantagruel's dad, Gargantua drinks the milk of 17,913 cows.When the Parisians are behaving like paparazzi and keep following him, he finds a rather carnivalesque solution. What is it?

Answer: He climbs on a churchtower and from there he pees them over, drowning some 260,418 of them

It may be noticed that Gargantua was born on 3d of February, which is very close to the earliest day that Mardi Gras can be celebrated (Easter being on the 21st of March in that case). Candlemas on 2nd of February is the traditional day when the Bear (not the Ground Hog) leaves his cavern, inspects the sky and then decides whether he is going to return to his cavern and sleep on for another forty days , or start celebrating the new Spring.A clouded sky being a good omen in this case,as a too clear sky would spell another period of frost. Of Pantagruel it is said that he drinks tha milk of 4,600 cows.

8. In 1542 Rabelais published a second volume in which we are told the life-story of Pantagruel's father, Gargantua, an equally formidable giant. What is special about his birth?

Answer: Gargantua was born from the ear of his mother

It's a bit confusing that the volume on Pantagruel(= junior) which normally should FOLLOW the one about Gargantua (= senior) , was in actual fact published first. There are three more volumes :the so-called 'Third Book', (1546)the 'Fourth Book' (1552) and the 'Fifth Book' (1564).

The most important fragment of Book Five , about the Ile Sonnante had already been published in 1562. Gargantua spent eleven, not twelve months in his mother's womb. The first words spoken by Gargantua are world-famous: 'A boire'.( = Give me something to drink.)

9. The education of Gargantua is a very important aspect of the book. He does not get the ancient medieval type of education in which learning by heart of meaningless things predominated, but a fairly rigorous study-schedule in which no time is wasted to give the student a 'universal' education. Who is Gargantua's teacher?

Answer: Ponocrate

Friar John (Frere Jean des Entommeurs is his full name in French) is to Gargantua the equivalent of what Panurge was to Pantagruel. The pseudo-scholarly companion. In general Gargantua's story is less farcical than Pantagruel's and Rabelais does not miss an opportunity to show his real opinions on certain topical subjects. Pornocrate is a slight adaptation of the name of Rabelais' character which was used by the Belgian caricaturist and friend of Charles Baudelaire's, Felicien Rops.In a famous cartoon he shows how sexual passion may turn men into pigs. 'Porno-crate' somehow means: Lust rules the world. Picrochole is Rabelais' caricature of Charles V, his King Francis the First's archenemy.

In his story of 'the Picrocholian wars' he makes fun of Charles V, whom he calls a man 'with a bitter bile' (picro - cholos). Charles V's motto was 'Plus oultre'( I want to surpass myself) - which Gargantua reads as : 'I always want more land '. Gargantua's father, Grandgousier, is depicted with a few traits of Francis I's father, Louis XII, the popular Father of the (French) People.

When describing the killings of these wars, Rabelais uses his knowledge of human anatomy , a science which was in full development since the publication of Andreas Vesalius' 'De corporis humani fabrica ' and Charles Estienne's ' De dissectione partium corporis.' The Fleming Vesalius was Charles V 's personal physician.

10. As a reward for his role in defeating Picrochole, Friar John is allowed to establish an abbey completely to his own taste.The description of this so-called 'Abbey of Theleme' is a corner-stone of Rabelais' real theological and philosophic thinking. The ground-rule in that abbey was an adaptation of a line from St. Augustine which for Rabelais summarizes what true religion comes down to. What was the famous motto?

Answer: Ama et fac quod vis. - Love and do what you like.

St. Augustine's idea was that if you really were inspired by the love of God, you did not need a list of do's and don'ts. Your actions would always be moral because your heart was pure and filled with divine grace. Rabelais makes a slightly ambiguous and mocking interpretation of this motto, when he re-writes it as 'Fais ce que voudras'.

In Rabelaisian French: ' Faictz ce que vouldras'. Or in the terms of May 1968: 'Il faut interdire l' interdit'. 'It must be forbidden to forbid'.

Source: Author flem-ish

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor CellarDoor before going online.
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Rabelais Trivia Quiz

Literary analysts have made it clearer and clearer how much more recent authors - from Sterne to Joyce and Irving a.o. - owe to the great French Renaissance author Francois Rabelais. See how well you know the basics of his most popular works.

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