''Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel'' (''The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel'') is a
woodcut
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that ...
picture book published in 1565 by French illustrator
Richard Breton. While Breton released the book, he did not illustrate it. Its original illustrator is unknown, but is speculated to be engraver
François Desprez.
Background
Published roughly a decade after the death of
François Rabelais
François Rabelais ( , , ; born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553) was a French Renaissance writer, physician, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He is primarily known as a writer of satire, of the grotesque, and of bawdy jokes and ...
, a prominent writer and humanist in France, ''Les songes drolatiques'' was attributed to Rabelais by its publisher. Its title refers to the title character of Rabelais' most famous work, ''
Pantagruel
''The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel'' (french: La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, telling the adventures of two giants, Gargantua ( , ) and his son Pantagruel ...
'', and Breton claims in the preface that the pictures represent the last works of Rabelais before he died.
The word "drolatic" is an archaic term coming from French "drolatique", meaning "humorous" or "amusing". In the title it functions as an adjective for "dream", suggesting that the images were supposed to have been taken from the dreams of the giant Pantagruel.
Contents
''Les songes drolatiques'' consists of 120 woodcut images of monstrous creatures dressed in
contemporary clothing in fantastical situations. The style of the woodcuts is reflective of the bizarre style of previous artists such as
Bruegel the Elder or
Hieronymus Bosch
Hieronymus Bosch (, ; born Jheronimus van Aken ; – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch/Netherlandish painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on oa ...
. Beyond Breton's preface, there is no text in the book; each page is taken up solely by a single woodcut image.
This separates them from the works of Bruegel or Bosch, as well as the fact that the character of the images is focused on the dress and appearance of the figures, rather than their behavior or interactions with one another.
Impact
The picture book was met with positive reception, and played an important role in introducing the works of Rabelais to England. ''Les songes drolatiques'' were referenced in English
masques
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). A masque ...
, or plays, but the book was already known before it was incorporated into the masques.
Edward Dyer
Sir Edward Dyer (October 1543 – May 1607) was an English courtier and poet.
Life
The son of Sir Thomas Dyer, Kt., he was born at Sharpham Park, Glastonbury, Somerset. He was educated, according to Anthony Wood, either at Balliol Col ...
was the first to explicitly mention ''Les songes'' in his book ''The prayse of nothing'', and the first masque to include a reference to the images was
Ben Jonson's ''Vision of Delight'' in 1617.
Reproductions
In 1869, ''Les songes drolatiques'' was reproduced and reprinted by
Louis Perrin of Lyon. The new edition included an introduction by Perrin which discussed the symbolism and meaning of the images in the book.
was also inspired by the woodcuts, producing a series of 23
lithographs
Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...
in 1973 which also bore the name ''Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel''. Each numbered with
Roman numerals
Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, eac ...
, the lithographs were printed in black on thin
Japanese paper
is traditional Japanese paper. The term is used to describe paper that uses local fiber, processed by hand and made in the traditional manner. ''Washi'' is made using fibers from the inner bark of the gampi tree, the mitsumata shrub (''Ed ...
.
References
{{Gargantua and Pantagruel
1565 books
Woodcut novels
François Rabelais