Carnival and the Carnivalesque

1
Carnival and the Carnivalesque

• Mikhail Bakhtin

2
Carnivalistic

• Life turned inside out
• Suspends the structure of the ordinary.
• Hierarchy, distance
• Unifies opposites and allows the profane
• Not abstract thought but concrete rituals acted
  in life and influencing literature.

3
Primary act

• Mock crowning and decrowning of the carnival king
• Expresses carnival sense of shift and renewal
• Annihilates and renews.
• Structure is relative

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Ambivalence

• Crowning contains idea of decrowning
• King is not real, but a slave or jester
• Symbols of authority are double-layered real
  and stage prop
• All carnival symbols contain self-negation
• Dualistic ritual celebrates change
• Constructive death and inseparable opposites
• Shift between is whats important

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Duality

• All carnival images are dualistic
• Unite opposites w/in them
• Violation of the usual
• Fire destroys and renews the world (burning
  rituals common)
• Laughter directed at higher power, ridiculed to
  force it to renew itself (ritual laughter linked
  with death and rebirth, permits criticism
  impossible in serious form parody).

6
Public sphere

• Takes place in public space
• Symbol of communal performance
• Belongs to the people
• Carnival life and official life both legitimate
  but temporally divided, alternating.
• Familiar speech influenced by carnival symbolic
  abuse and ridicule, gesticulations.

7
world

• Carnival invades official, transforms worldview
• Reflected in art, literature
• Renaissance high point, declines afterwards
  masquerade retains decorative element, but loses
  touch w/ mass community performance less
  significant and not part of life.
• Still influential, but in mediated forms not by
  direct lived participation
• Source of carnivalization is not carnival itself,
  but already carnivalized literature loses power
  to shape genre, may only influence content.