The banquet played a privileged role in the Renaissance, and the joys of the table symbolised the appetite for knowledge of the people of the time.
Following Plato’s precepts, the banquet restored the body and allowed the mind to express itself. « Only the
banquet embraces all the parts of man […] for it restores the limbs, renews the humours, revives the spirits,
for it restores the limbs, renews the humours, revives the spirits, recreates the senses, sustains and enlivens reason » (Marcile Ficino, Treatise on the Banquet). Appetite (from the Latin appetitus: strong desire) is the act that leads us to approach the world in order to swallow it, to capture energy and transform it.
At the time of Rabelais, most culinary treatises were in Latin and used common sources from the Ancients : Plutarch, Aristotle, Pliny and Cato. The great classic De honesta voluptate by Bartholomeo Platina, which seeks pleasure in a humanist ideal of moderation and mastery at the table, appeared in 1474. The De re culinaria – On the culinary – attributed to the gastronome Apicius was published in 1541. Le Viandier de Taillevent and Le Ménagier de Paris are manuals that which perpetuate a culinary tradition inherited from the 14th and 15th centuries. When it comes to manners and table manners, the De Civilitate morum puerilium by Erasmus, published in 1530, is the leading authority on table manners.
This manual for children gives clear instructions on how to behave at table. In these manuals, food is presented in the form of extraordinary menus; the table is set and decorated, sweets and confectionery make their appearance and diners adopt elegant manners. In his literary relationship with food, Rabelais evokes both a taste for simple dishes and the abundance of an aristocratic table. He put his work at the service of a philosophy dispensed by giants : Pantagruélisme: « estre bons pantagruelistes c’est vivre en paix, joye, santé, faisans tousjours grande chere ».
In the collective imagination, the adjective Rabelaisien evokes the gastronome, fond of good food and accustomed to ample lippées.
Pantagruelian meals are eaten with a gargantuan appetite. Wine accompanied the agape of the giants since there is no better beverage to fill our brains, delight our minds, whet our appetites and delight our palates ». The entire work is placed under the sign of the gigantic gullets, of these « conduitz, par les conduz sortir les bons motz
motz, et entrent les bons morseaulx ». Table talk is not just bawdy, it conceals truths and criticisms.
This cornucopia (cornucopia of mirth and mockery) makes us laugh as much as it makes us think. Rabelais enthrones « a dynasty of bellies »: Grandgousier, Gargamelle, Gargantua. These full-throated giants swallow vast quantities of food and swallow the world in a thunderous ritual.
Eating and drinking punctuate the work, and the Banquet des Bien Ivres, lunch on the grass takes on the appearance of a horrific picnic, so much so that « for having eaten too much tripe » Gargamelle ends up giving birth
Gargantua, whose name is based on his cry of thirst: « A boyre, à boyre, à boyre!”
In response to this Noachide rallying cry, his father prophetically gave him his name: « Que
Gargantua ». Pantagruel is the « ruler of the alterez », and his birth is preceded his birth is preceded by a procession of beasts expelled from his mother’s womb (Badebec), like the animal kingdom emerging from Noah’s Ark, carrying hors d’oeuvres or « wine stings ». Before Rabelais, Pantagruel was a little demon of the sea who caused thirst; he thus echoes the abundance of wine and salt water among the Noahide giants, a reference to Noah who both invented wine and escaped the Flood.
From the moment they are born, the giant babies show a taste for extraordinary feasts and, like true and devour without restraint. This animal voracity is matched by an education in table manners. Meals become frugal, allowing
exchange, learning and civility. Gluttony gives way to pleasure. In Gargantua, feasting precedes childbirth and banquets follow victories. The Picrocholine war was a conflict that arose from a simple refusal to sell fouaces the recipe for which is given in the novel : « Bonnes fouaces faites à beau beurre, beaulx moyeux (jaunes) d’oeufs, wheat flour, saffron and spices ».
Behind the scenes of the war, Grandgousier keeps a sumptuous table, whether to celebrate a battle, recount a skirmish or perfect a tactic. To celebrate the return of his son, Grandgousier summons his maitres queux, whose names are evocative: « Fripesauce, Hoschepot, Pilleverjus », and gives a grand banquet where the dishes are listed in superlative terms. In contrast to this art of living, the attackers are compared to thick brutes who know neither how to live or how to eat and who, after having spoiled the grape harvest of the Clos de Seuilly, refuse to accept the fouaces they have been given as a sign of peace.
For Picrochole, gluttony only arouses hostility: « We’ll only have too much food. Are we here to eat or to fight? Gargantua is replete with references to culinary vocabulary and ends with an invitation to « grand chere ».
This novel and the Quart Livre are the two works by Rabelais’ works that contain the most gastronomic references. Although food is omnipresent, it is not always mouth-watering.
ingestion and excretion are seen as two related functions. Excess does little to bring pleasure and Rabelais – through this abundance which can lead to disgust and disorder – denounces, as a doctor, the overabundance by advocating the middle way of a true Epicurean. This denunciation of excess is often perceived by many readers as an apology for overeating.
The banquet organised by Grandgousier to celebrate the return of his son Gargantua takes on the appearance of a game of lists :
« On apresta le soupper et de surcroist feurent roustiz, sez boeufs, troys genisses, trente et deux veaux, soixante et troys ninety-five sheep, three hundred gourretz of laict à beau moust, eleven vintg perdrys, seven hundred woodcocks, four hundred chappons de Loudun et Cornouille, six thousand hens and as many pigeons, six hundred gualinottes, fourteen three hundred and three hundred hostards and one thousand and seven hundred hutches. Of the venison one cannot often cover, except for
one wild boar sent by the abbot of Turpenay, and ten and eight wild beasts donated by the lord of Grandmont, seven twenties pheasants, and several dozen woodpigeons, river birds, cereles, buours, courtes, plovers, francolys, cravans [geese]
