Review of Gargantua

The second book in the Pantagruel and Gargantua series, which I read first (my copy of the series placed it before Pantagruel because it's a prequel to that book.) The introduction made me laugh hysterically, and the first several chapters made me laugh until I cried. Rabelais is a master of repetition; his most common form of joke is to describe a ludicrous number of items within a character's response, or in a description of a scene. For example, one early chapter (in my opinion, the funniest) is almost entirely taken up with an enumeration of the things that Pantagruel, a toddler of comic proportions, has used to wipe his bottom.