Class dates: Mondays, March 23, 30, April 13, 20, 27 (5 weeks)

Class time: 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Location: Assumption, Kennedy 119

Among the giants of World Literature whose names have assumed adjectival form—for example, Homeric, Shakespearean and Joycean—the case of Rabelais is worth noting. Although he entered religious orders at an early age, he is best known as the author of such exuberantly irreverent works as Pantagruel and Gargantua. Celebrated for his embrace of the physical, earthy and carnivalesque, he ranks alongside his famous Italian predecessor, Giovanni Boccaccio, as one of the world’s great humorists and satirists, so that the word “Rabelaisian” regularly refers to the particular style of revelry for which he is famous. We will read the second of his books on the adventures of Pantagruel and Gargantua.

• Required Reading: Rabelais, Francois.   Gargantua and Pantagruel. T ranslated by M.A. Screech. Penguin Classic(New York, 2006).

Instructor: Lillian Corti majored in Italian and French as an undergraduate at Brooklyn College and earned a doctorate in Comparative Literature at the City University of New York in 1984. She taught French language and literature at Tulsa University and World Literature in translation at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.