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François Rabelais was the author of Gargantua and Pantagruel, which consists of 4 books and is intended primarily as satire but seems to have plenty of goofy elements to it as well. He did write other things as well, but the "Gargantua" books are his most well known. I know I've heard of Rabelais in passing, but I don't think I read any of his work. But I downloaded a copy of the first pants-O-gruel from Project Gutenburg. So, yay, I guess.

The reason Rabelais stuck in my mind for a few days is because last week I happened to be looking up stuff about Gustave Dore, a French artist who illustrated a later edition of the "Gargantua" books.

Dore was a pretty prolific artist and as a kid, I had an old copy of Perrault fairy tales that he illustrated and I wanted to learn more about him. I, the Queen of Clutter unearthed this book fairly recently and only sneezed a dozen times while dusting it off.

Here is one picture from Gargantua.

And another here

There are more Dore illustrations here .

So I guess I did not realize just how prolific Dore was. According to Doreillustrations.com

Damnnn, think of all the dusty books I could dust during that life span!