Peter Anthony Motteux Books

Don Quixote is a masterpiece of world fiction, a brilliant satire on traditional romances and an uproarious comedy and a prose-epic in a new genre for its time. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. Don Quixote's mount is an old, bedraggled horse named Rocinante on which he travels through sixteenth-century Spain in search of adventure, dedicating his actions of valour to a simple country girl whom he calls Dulcinea, seeing her as his lady. He takes on spirits, evil enchanters and most famously, of course, giants in the form of windmills.

François Rabelais holds a unique place in the history of world literature, and no more so than for his extraordinary satirical entertainment Gargantua and Pantagruel. Here the first of these volumes is presented in a new and lively translation. Pantagruel recounts the life a popular giant. From his portentous birth and colorful childhood, to his visit to Paris and his travels through Utopia, and not withstanding his enormous appetite, Pantagruel’s history is told with a breathtaking degree of gaiety and wit. Ingeniously coining new expressions, and with an unashamed obsession with bodily functions, Rabelais blends prose and poetry, the sacred and profound, to offer a heady satire of the religious society of his day. The result is a bawdy and brilliant celebration of life.