Rabelais' Humanistic Thought In GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL

Rabelais was one of the key representatives in French Renaissance and a famous humanistic writer. His representative work, GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL, was the earliest novel in France, which sufficiently expressed the humanistic thought and has been paid much attention. However, because of his unique language and other reasons, Rabelais was considered to be one of the puzzlers among the writers who have been studied. The humanistic thought in GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL needs also to be studied further. Generalizing former research achievements, this paper made some research on the humanistic thought from a historical and cultural perspective. This paper is divided into four parts:Part one, introduction about Francois Rabelais and GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL. Rabelais lived in the Renaissance, which was an important transitional period of Europe from the Middle Ages to the modern times. Greatly influenced by the Renaissance, he has pursued humanistic thought all his life. His own living, studying and working experience made him know clearly about the cancer of the society and the church at that time. With humorous language, his representative work sufficiently reflected humanistic thought, and the process of its publication was full of hardship. The situation of Rabelais' living era, his life and the creation of his representative work were closely related to the generation and development of his humanistic thought.Part two, the humanistic thought in GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL. The paper's research includes mainly three parts: religion, education and war. Sufficiently criticizing the cancer of the system, asceticism and obscurantism of the Catholic Church, Rabelais advocated also individual liberation and liberty in his work. Meanwhile he created ideal monk and abbey, hoping to purify Catholic Church. So his religious thought was formed on the basis of the religious faith. The limits of Rabelais' religious thought exerted certain influence on his educational and martial thought. Education was the common problem which was paid close attention by the humanists at that time. Rabelais has experienced scholastic education and unreligious education, so he criticized the harmfulness of scholastic education, advocated humanistic education and conceived the intellectuals' ideal kingdom, while his moral thought was formed on the basis of the religious faith. The first three books of GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL all involved martial problems. The Hundred Years' War and the Italian War had tremendous influence on France. In virtue of the description about wars, Rabelais expressed his humanistic martial thought, i.e. admiring human beings' power, exerting human beings' wisdom, respecting human beings' life and emphasizing human beings' moral characters. Meanwhile the part about wars was the affirmation of his educational thought. And his martial thought showed also his piety and reverence towards God.Part three, The medium in GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL to make humanistic thought known. At first sight, GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL was full of vulgarity, like a coarse joke book. In order to understand his humanistic thought, we must know about his language characteristics. Instead of classical language, Rabelais has used common French people's words in his work. Bakhtin, the famous Russian ideologist, pointed out the square factors in GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL from the perspective of a popular humorous culture, and analyzed the market and carnival of Rabelais' era. At the same time he put forward the concept of square language and pointed out its importance in the expression of Rabelais' humanistic thought, it was a medium between the author andreaders. And there was another type of literature in the book------language of people tellingstories in the square, which could be classified as square language and was important for us to understand Rabelais' humanistic thought.Part four, evaluation of the humanistic thought in GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL. As a giant in the Renaissance, Rabelais made great contribution to his era and his humanistic thought had significant historic value. Furthermore his educational and martial thought still had positive meaning at present. But Rabelais' humanistic thought also had some limits. Firstly, he didn't oppose the religion, only wanted to purify Catholic Church. Secondly, his moral thought was formed on the basis of the religious faith. Thirdly, through his martial thought we could see his piety and reverence towards God. Lastly, the human beings whom he has praised were essentially anthropomorphic bourgeoisie.