Published eleven years after his death (1553), Le Cinquième Livre to Rabelais is still contested by some specialists despite the analysis by Mireille Huchon (Rabelais Grammairien, 1981), in which she authenticated a large part of its drafts.

Conversely, other specialists neglect the anonymous arranger who determined the layout, the transitions and the writing of certain passages, and incorrectly consider it as the completion of the pantagruelian epic. This version succeeds the 1562 publication of chapters I-XVI in L'Île Sonnante that the unsigned manuscript of the Cinquième Livre* (circa 1560?) completes without resolving all of the problems of the text.

This digital edition uses the 1564 edition with neither date nor location, and is based on the copy that seems the most reliable (BnF RES Y2 2169). It was published in the volume of the Oeuvres Romanesques by Rabelais, under the direction of Marie-Luce Demonet (Poitiers, La Licorne, 1999), having initially been published on the CD-ROM of the Electro-chroniques of Rabelais (1994) by the team EQUIL XVI from Clermont-Ferrand, and displayed onto the University of Nice website by Étienne Brunet (1995), after correcting the most obvious misprints.

Marie-Luce Demonet, July 2015

* currently in publication by the BVH