Voltaire writes about Gargantua

If ever there has been a well-founded reputation, it is that of Gargantua. Nonetheless, there are in this philosophical and critical century some foolhardy souls who have dared to deny the prodigious feats of that great man, and who have taken their Pyrrhonian scepticism so far as to doubt that he ever existed.

Thus begins Voltaire’s article ‘Gargantua’, written in 1772 for his Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, in a new translation by Victoria Harris, MA student at the University of Bristol. Undertaken as part of the joint Voltaire Foundation–University of Bristol Student Translation Project, it makes this amusing piece (which also contains a more serious message about credibility of historical sources) more accessible to a wider audience.

Read Victoria’s translation here.