The adventurous life of the sixteenth-century French writer.

François Rabelais was one of the Renaissance’s most extraordinary figures: comic author, physician, teacher, editor, monk, and tireless intellectual. Best known for the exuberant adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel, he transformed French literature with a style that combined satire, folklore, fantasy, and learning. Yet the details of his life have long remained obscured by myth and anecdote. Drawing on the latest research, this biography reconstructs Rabelais’ remarkable career, tracing his religious vocation, medical practice, work in the early printing industry, travels in Italy, connections at court, and repeated encounters with censorship. Alongside the story of his extraordinary works, Richard Cooper shows how Rabelais navigated the intellectual, religious and political tensions of sixteenth-century Europe, illuminating the world that helped shape one of literature’s most inventive and enduring voices.