The Garden Guide

Rabelais, Francois

Born - Died : 1483 - 1553

French humanist and writer who sought to free medieval life of the pretence and superstition ecclesiastical life. There are some references to gardens in his writings, as discussed by Gothein in her sections on Boccaccio (Chapter 6) and French renaissance gardens (Chapter 9). In the latter she writes that 'in the park farther on and near the castle, there was no lack of baths, animal cages, hippodrome, theatre, open and enclosed places for tennis, targets for archery - in fact, all the things that could be found in the parks of that day, or that a learned student of past history could supply. Rabelais does not say much about the real laying-out of the individual gardens ; and any special feature is only useful to him in so far as it serves the ends and suits the style of his general scheme of ideal education.' Three of Rabelais books were translated into English. 'Rabelaisian' is used as an adjective to mean 'marked by exuberant imagination, language and coarse humour'. He drew ideas from Erasmus.