RABELAIS, François.

£15,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The First Book [Third Book; Fourth and Fifth Books] of the Works: Containing Five Books of the Lives, Heroick Deeds, and Sayings of Gargantua, And his Sonne Pantagruel... First edition in English of Les Cinq livres des faits et dits de Gargantua et Pantagruel (c. 1532 - c. 1564), the work of two different translators published episodically over more than 40 years and so rarely found complete.An eccentric Scottish writer of stylistic and verbal virtuousity, or, in his own terms, a "logofascinated spirit" (Works, 231), Sir Thomas Urquhart has been considered by many a splendid match for his subject. "This translation has been called 'one of the most perfect transfusions of an author from one language into another that ever man accomplished'" (Pforzheimer 814). "In Rabelais, Urquhart found a writer whose style and imagination matched his own. Both 'cultivated a taste for a copious, robust and original vocabulary. To each of them, imagination … furnished a rare selection of racy words in extraordinary abundance' (Roe, 11)" (ODNB). Urquhart's translation of Rabelais was his final work. The first volume (books I and II) appeared in 1653 and was reprinted in 1664, by which time Urquhart had, according to family legend, died laughing on hearing of Charles II's restoration. The third book, left unfinished by him and completed by the Huguenot emigré Peter Anthony Motteux (formerly Pierre-Antoine Le Motteux), appeared in 1693. Motteux's translation of books IV and V was published in 169

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