Milan Kundera, in the essay “The Day Panurge No Longer Makes People Laugh”, published in “Testaments Betrayed” (1993):
These are the passages wherein Rabelais’s [The Fourth Book] becomes fully and radically a novel: that is, a realm where moral judgment is suspended.
Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the view-point of the novel’s wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil. Not that the novelist utterly denies that moral judgment is legitimate, but that he refuses it a place in the novel. If you like, you can accuse [Rabelais’s character] Panurge of cowardice, accuse Emma Bovary, accuse Rastingnac — that’s your business; the novelist has nothing do do with it [p. 7].