Rabelais and His World is a fascinating interpretation of the Rabelaisian novel. Here, Bakhtin demonstrates the essential relationship of Gargantua and Pantagruel with popular culture, grotesque realism, and carnival. Rabelais did not write his books isolated in his study, but by wandering through the markets and fairs of French cities, listening to the voices of merchants and watching performances by traveling troupes. Moreover, Rabelais was a great representative of grotesque literature: he did not serve the classical aesthetic ideal but highlighted the deformed, the paradoxical, and the excessive. Above all, he became the quintessential expression of the carnival spirit, that force which overturns and reverses the established order. Bakhtin's study, however, does not stop at interpreting Rabelais; it also presents society and the culture of the Renaissance from an entirely new perspective. It proves that festivals, fairs, and carnivals, the culture of laughter and the square, were not marginal but central elements in the life of European societies at the time. At regular intervals, the smooth working life was interrupted by multi-day festivities, with organized parades, dances, and revelries. And these popular festivals and entertainments shaped the thought and life of all social classes. Above all, however, Bakhtin's book is a manifesto proclaiming the complete liberation of the human spirit from fear. The target of Rabelais's attacks, the author reminds us, were the humorless, all those who intimidate and oppress humanity with their seriousness and gloom. Thanks to laughter, with its destructive and simultaneously regenerative power, man is liberated from fear.