Gargantua and Pantagruel

Gargantua and Pantagruel is a connected series of five books written in the sixteenth century by François Rabelais. The first volume was published around 1532; the fifth was published posthumously around 1564 and some consider its attribution to Rabelais debatable. It is the story of two giants, a father (Gargantua) and his son (Pantagruel) and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein.

The introduction to the series runs:

Good friends, my Readers, who peruse this Book,
Be not offended, whilst on it you look:
Denude yourselves of all depraved affection,
For it contains no badness, nor infection:
'Tis true that it brings forth to you no birth
Of any value, but in point of mirth;
Thinking therefore how sorrow might your mind
Consume, I could no apter subject find;
One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span;
Because to laugh is proper to the man.

The series in the original French is entitled La Vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel. A widely available English translation is Five Books of the Lives, Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Gargantua and Pantagruel, translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Peter Antony Motteux.

Gargantua and Pantagruel is available online from Project Gutenberg in the above translation: http://www.gutenberg.org/index/by-author/ra0