Since at least the 18th century, grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks. In art, performance, and literature, however, grotesque may also refer to something that simultaneously invokes an audience feeling of uncomfortable bizarreness as well as sympathetic pity.

François Rabelais was a French writer who has been called the first great French prose author. A humanist of the French Renaissance and Greek scholar, he attracted opposition from both John Calvin and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Though in his day he was best known as a physician, scholar, diplomat, and Catholic priest, later he became better known as a satirist, for his depictions of the grotesque, and for his larger-than-life characters.