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Fred Chappell Appreciates Rabelais

Appreciation of François Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel by Fred Chappell



The stories of the giant Gargantua and his giant son Pantagruel, of their birth, nurture, education, and heroic feats of arms; of Pantagruel’s voyages through strange lands and exotic cultures in search of ultimate wisdom; of their companions Rondibilis, Frère Jean, and the irrepressible, inexpressible Panurge; of their arriving at last in the abode of the Priestess Bacbuc whose oracular Bottle utters the final truth they have sought —these stories are impossible to summarize and set in order.

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Featured List

Fred Chappell Appreciates Rabelais

Appreciation of François Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel by Fred Chappell



The stories of the giant Gargantua and his giant son Pantagruel, of their birth, nurture, education, and heroic feats of arms; of Pantagruel’s voyages through strange lands and exotic cultures in search of ultimate wisdom; of their companions Rondibilis, Frère Jean, and the irrepressible, inexpressible Panurge; of their arriving at last in the abode of the Priestess Bacbuc whose oracular Bottle utters the final truth they have sought —these stories are impossible to summarize and set in order.

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The Book: The Top Ten

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New List

Peter Carey

1. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857)
2. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (1759–67)
3. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1860–61)
4. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605, 1615)
5. Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871–72)
6. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)
7. Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald (2001)
8. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez (1985)
9. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881)
10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Classic List

Emma Donoghue

1. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (1747–48)
2. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (1595)
3. Emma by Jane Austen (1816)
4. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1860–61)
5. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
6. Red Shift by Alan Garner (1973)
7. Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1782)
8. Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus (1989)
9. The Passion by Jeanette Winterson (1987)
10. Ulverton by Adam Thorpe (1992)