Social Constraints Breaking social constraints, Carnival

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Social Constraints Breaking social constraints,
Carnival
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Jabberwocky

• Lewis Carrols nonsense poem found in Through the
  Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
  is generally considered to be one of the greatest
  nonsense poems written in the English language.
• The word jabberwocky is also occasionally used
  as a synonym of nonsense.

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Jabberwocky

• 'Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and
  gimble in the wabeAll mimsy were the
  borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe."Beware
  the Jabberwock, my son!The jaws that bite, the
  claws that catch!Beware the Jubjub bird, and
  shunThe frumious Bandersnatch!"He took his
  vorpal sword in handLong time the manxome foe
  he soughtSo rested he by the Tumtum tree,And
  stood awhile in thought.And as in uffish
  thought he stood,The Jabberwock, with eyes of
  flame,Came whiffling through the tulgey
  wood,And burbled as it came!One, two! One,
  two! and through and throughThe vorpal blade
  went snicker-snack!He left it dead, and with its
  headHe went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?Come to my
arms, my beamish boy!O frabjous day! Callooh!
Callay!"He chortled in his joy.'Twas brillig,
and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the
wabeAll mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome
raths outgrabe.
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Social Constraints

• What is a good child like? Name some of his/her
  characteristics?
• How free are children to do whatever they wish?
• What are some things that children should not do?
• Who makes the rules that children are supposed to
  follow?
• Who decides what is good and bad for a child to
  do?
• How do they make these decisions?

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Social Constraints

• Rules from parents
• Rules at school
• Religious guidelines
• Peer pressure
• Laws of propriety (socially acceptable behavior)
• Fashion
• language/behavior
• Selfishness/selflessness
• Behavior toward opposite sex

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Breaking social constraints in literature

• gives a feeling of power when readers identify
  with characters who break the rules.
• challenges the norms and conventions of society
  by testing them.
• provides a site for humor.

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The Carnival Tradition

• Carnival is a festive season when the normal
  rules of society dont apply. It occurs
  immediately before Lent usually during February
  or March. (Lent is a time on the Christian
  calendar when followers give up eating meat
  and/or give up something they really like in
  order to prepare for the passion of Christ.) It
  typically involves a public celebration or parade
  combining some elements of a circus and public
  street party. People often dress up or masquerade
  during the celebrations.
• Popular Carnivals today
• Carnival at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Mardi Gras in New Orleans. USA
• Carnival in Venice, Italy

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Carnival Venice
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Carnival at Rio
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Mardi Gras
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Carnival

• Carnival is a time or space in which the normal
  rules of society dont apply.
• Carnivalesque literature highlights this kind of
  atmosphere.
• Nonsense is one way of rejecting the formal rules
  of society. This makes it empowering.
• The grotesque is an aspect of carnival that
  celebrates the physical body and the lower bodily
  functions.

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Carnival

• Its joyous, anti-authoritarian, riotous, carnal
  and liberatory celebration, to escape the
  pressures of life.
• Participants may deliberately violate what appear
  to be standards of sense and decency (which are
  really methods of social and imaginative
  control).
• Carnivals can be a means of social control
  because the carnival exists within a certain
  space and time. When it ends, then one more
  willingly follows the rules of society once
  again.
• Carnival can also bring freedom and a sense of
  power because people are able to do what they
  want to do.
• A classic scene of a Renaissance carnival
  appears in the opening chapters of The Hunchback
  of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo. Quasimodo, the
  hunchback, becomes the King of Fools and is
  paraded like a hero through the streets.

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Carnivalesque

• Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin studied
  Renaissance carnivals and used the ideas he found
  to explain much of what happens in contemporary
  society and literature.
• Something is carnivalesque when the themes of the
  carnival twist, mutate, and invert standard
  themes of societal makeup.
• When the standards of society are twisted,
  parodied, and inverted in a playful, crazy kind
  of way in stories, we can often see this as
  carnivalesque.
• In carnivalesque literature, as in a carnival, we
  may see mixing and confrontations of the high and
  low, upper-class and lower-class, spiritual and
  material, young and old, male and female, daily
  identities and festive masks, seriousness and the
  comical.

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Carnivalesque in childrens literature

• Peter Pan
• Neverland is a place where normal rules dont
  make sense.
• Wendy still pays attention to the rules of
  society. She performs the duty of a mother and is
  the one that brings everyone back to reality.
• Peter follows rules of fair play.

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Nonsense in Peter Pan

• What other examples can you find of nonsense in
  this novel?

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The Adventures of Captain Underpants

• Dav Pilkey

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Captain Underpants

• Think about these questions as we read.
• Where do you see nonsense? How do you react to
  it?
• Do you like George and Harold? Why or why not?
• Why do you think it has become immensely popular?
• How are the rules of society inverted? (In what
  ways is it carnivalesque?)

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Now answer these questions

• Where do you see nonsense? How do you react to
  it?
• Do you like George and Harold? Why or why not?
• Why do you think it has become immensely popular?
• How are the rules of society inverted? (In what
  ways is it carnivalesque?)