Gargantua
Also known as: Grand-Tua, Grand-Tuard, Guergintua, Jergantua, Gargountoun, Gargantoua
Basic account
Folk giant older than Rabelais: over four hundred French megaliths and rocks are named for him.
Account
Rabelais did not invent him. The name was already in use as a nickname in 1470, and by then the countryside was full of his furniture.
Motifs
- The giant as builder
- Ended by Christianity
- Attached to a real place
Names only. Connections open with membership.
What is disputed
Sébillot restates a reading of the name as meaning the devourer, but he credits the linguistic analysis of the root gar to Gaidoz, whose essay he reprints in the same introduction.
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Sources
- Paul Sébillot, Gargantua dans les traditions populaires, Maisonneuve, Paris, 1883
5 more sources. Sources and scholarly notes come with the same membership.
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Scholarly notes
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Chain of custody
Gargantua is Rabelais's invention: the giant was made up by a sixteenth-century novelist, and everything else, including the standing stones that carry his name, is downstream of the book.
The paper trail is thinner and more contested than either side of this argument usually admits, and the nineteenth-century scholars who built the case against Rabelais conceded its weakest point in their own pages.
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