François Rabelais in the context of "Satirist"

Montpellier (UK: /mɒntˈpɛlieɪ/; US: /ˌmoʊnpɛlˈjeɪ/) is a city in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region of Occitania, Montpellier is the prefecture of the department of Hérault. At the 2020 census, 299,096 people lived in the city proper, while its metropolitan area had a population of 813,272. The inhabitants are called Montpelliérains.

In the Middle Ages, Montpellier was an important city of the Crown of Aragon (and was the birthplace of James I), and then of Majorca, before its sale to France in 1349. Established in 1220, the University of Montpellier is one of the oldest universities in the world and has the oldest medical school still in operation, with notable alumni such as Petrarch, Nostradamus and François Rabelais. Above the medieval city, the ancient citadel of Montpellier is a stronghold built in the seventeenth century by Louis XIII.

Epictetus (/ˌɛpɪkˈtiːtəs/, EH-pick-TEE-təss; Ancient Greek: Ἐπίκτητος, Epíktētos; c. 50 – c. 135 AD) was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was born into slavery at Hierapolis, Phrygia (present-day Pamukkale, in western Turkey) and lived in Rome until his banishment, after which he spent the rest of his life in Nicopolis in northwestern Greece.

Epictetus studied Stoic philosophy under Musonius Rufus and after manumission, his formal emancipation from slavery, he began to teach philosophy. When philosophers were banished from Rome by Emperor Domitian toward the end of the first century, Epictetus founded a school of philosophy in Nicopolis. He taught that philosophy is a way of life and not simply a theoretical discipline. To Epictetus, all external events are beyond our control; he argues that we should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. However, he held that individuals are responsible for their own actions, which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline. His teachings were written down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses and Enchiridion. They influenced many later thinkers, including Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, Diderot, Montesquieu, Rabelais, and Samuel Johnson.

Poitiers is a university city on the river Clain in west-central France. It is a commune, the capital of the Vienne department, part of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of France, and the historical center of Poitou Province. In 2021, it had a population of 90,240. Its conurbation had 134,397 inhabitants in 2021 and is the municipal center of an urban area of 281,789 inhabitants. It is a city of art and history, still known popularly as the "Ville aux cent clochers" ("City of a hundred bell towers").

With more than 30,000 students, Poitiers has been a major university town since the creation of its university in 1431, having hosted world-renowned figures and thinkers such as René Descartes, Joachim du Bellay and François Rabelais, among others. The plaza of the town is picturesque; its streets including predominantly preserved historical architecture and half-timbered houses, especially religious edifices, commonly from the Romanesque period. The latter includes notably the 4th century baptistery of Saint-Jean (Baptistère Saint-Jean), the 7th century Merovingian underground chapel of the Hypogeum of the Dunes (L'Hypogée des Dunes), the Church of Notre-Dame-la-Grande (12th century), the Church of Saint-Porchaire (12th century) or Poitiers Cathedral (end of the 12th century) as well as the Palace of Poitiers, until recently a courthouse (12th century), the former palace of the Counts of Poitou, Dukes of Aquitaine, where the Dowager Queen of France and England Eleanor of Aquitaine held her "Court of Love".

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, also known as Tristram Shandy, is a humorous novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published from 1759 to 1767, in nine volumes across five instalments. The novel purports to be a memoir, but the titular Tristram is an effusive and digressive narrator who begins the story with his conception and doesn't reach a description of his birth until the third volume. While attempting to explain four accidents in his early life which have doomed him to an unhappy future, Tristram describes domestic conflicts between his irritable father Walter and his gentle Uncle Toby, and inserts humorous discourses on a range of intellectual topics.

Stylistically, Sterne is influenced by the earlier satirists Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Rabelais, and Cervantes. The novel is characterised by innuendo, especially sexual double entendre and aposiopesis (unfinished sentences). Sterne burlesques serious writers and genres, particularly parodying Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy and the genre of consolatio. The novel is also remembered for surprising visual elements, such as blank, black, and marbled pages; entire paragraphs censored with asterisks; and inserted diagrams.