François Rabelais

François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553) wrote the sprawling, riotous Gargantua and Pantagruel, whose giants, fantastical voyages (the quest for the Oracle of the Bottle) and boundless invention make it a wellspring of imaginative and satirical fiction. His fusion of learning, obscenity and utopian dreaming, the Abbey of Thélème and its motto ‘Do what thou wilt’, echoes down through the fantastic and speculative traditions.