Abstract: Why is Brother Jean, so out of step with stereotypes, a monk? The initial comic effect is converted into an enigma in the face of the troublemaker who is raised to the rank of paragon and conceived in the shadow of an epic but disturbing literary brother, Maugis. The analysis shows how Rabelais uses the model of the chanson de geste, finally overcoming it through a semantic and medical reinvigoration of the status of monk or antimonk, in order to understand how Gargantua benefits from “having the monk.”
