SOURCE: “Solution and Dissolution in the Closure to the Quart Livre,” in Essays in Literature,Vol. XV, No. 1, Spring 1988, pp. 131-40.

In the following essay, Nilles argues that Rabelais deliberately evades a sense of finality and resolution in the conclusion of the Quart Livre.

The Quart Livre, which appeared in 1552, is the last work whose authorship is uncontestably attributed to François Rabelais. It may seem ironic that an author who had devoted three volumes to the comic exploits of the giants Gargantua and Pantagruel should introduce the final installment of their “faicts et dicts” (“words and deeds”) with a praise of moderation. But, rather than an absence of extremes, the Quart Livre's prologue sees moderation as the joining of contraries in one harmonious whole, as exemplified by the narrator's own “moderate” wish for good health, in which a sound mind and a sound body sustain one...