François Rabelais: Science, Life, And Individualism In World Literature
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François Rabelais is a multi-dimensional person such as humanist writer, priest, philosopher and doctor who lived in renaissance era. He had education in a Franciscan monastery and became a priest. During his education he learnt Greek and Latin. He reflects the features of renaissance. He had different researches about science, law, and philology. His studies were almost always criticized by Franciscan monastery; therefore, he left from Franciscan monastery to Benedictine. After a while, he entered the faculty of medicine and he became a doctor. During his life he wrote significant work which is named Pantagruel and Gargantua. This work is one of the most famous examples of satire in the world literature. The real aim of his satires is…show more content… Individualism is important for him and he cares about human being. Therefore, he criticized the Catholic Church in a comic way. - Rabelais remarks his thought clearly his faith to human nature and science.-- “… for Gargantua used to say that the greatest waste of time that he knew was to watch the clock – what good ever came of it?- and that there was no greater lunacy in the word than to rule of your life by the sound of bell and not according to the dictates of good sense and intelligence.” Rabelais attacks the doctrine of Catholic Church with these sentences. Sound of bell refers to the Catholic Church. He warns people that people should shape their lives under the guidance of their own feelings and thoughts. He says that don’t believe doctrine of Catholic Church without questioning. “Even if we were set to roast today we’d never get burnt, ‘said the major-domo.’ ‘We have been too well basted! Well, my dear little chap, you have put bales of straw over our horns all night! One of these days I shall see you made Pope!” “A pape I mean to be! Said Gargantua, ‘then you will be papillon and my nice little popinjay a perfect papelard(205)”. In this quotation, Rabelais criticizes and humiliates the Pope in a comic way and he emphasizes that Pope is an unreliable person. James Luther Adams, Wilson Yates, and Robert Penn Warren also state Rabelais’s perspective about the Church that…show more content… In fact, The Abbey of Theleme is a paradox of the other monastery. Rabelais expresses that clergy will get new abilities in the Abbey of Theleme unlike the others. These abilities are explained in Historical Dictionary of Utopianism:
The resulting liberty, according to Rabelais speaking through the Monk, would create me and women of virtue who were literate, could sing, and play several musical instruments, and could speak five or six languages and who, being freed from imposed subjection and constraint, would live in spontaneous cooperation in peace and virtue within the abbey(1-2).
All in all, Rabelais represents the spirit of Renaissance. As well as his humanistic personality, a good human right activist; he is a revolutionist who lives and dies for the sake of his dreams. During his life, he tries to change the scholastic thoughts and the order of Catholic Church. So, in his immortal satirical novel, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais opposed to medieval thought and attacked the basis of feudalism, especially the Catholic Church. He especially indites ridicules characters, ignoramus scholastic theologians, judges and treasury officials exploiting the