2025/01/01 by Subramani, Anurag
Social Sciences · #François Rabelais #Mikhail Bakhtin #Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies #Soviet and Russian History #Vladimir Nabokov Literary Studies #carnival #grotesque realism #irreverent #lower bodily stratum
paper · doi:10.26021/16133
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/11/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
Carnival as a particular mode of literary expression first came into prominence in the writings of the Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin introduces the concept in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics but it is in Rabelais and his World where he undertakes a detailed analysis of the concept of carnival using what he considers to be the greatest expression of a carnivalised text, François Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel. Though he also mentions the works of William Shakespeare and Miquel de Cervantes as literary expressions of carnival, for Bakhtin, the European medieval folk culture of carnival with its ambivalence, its articulation of a multiplicity of voices and perspectives, its reliance on scatological and earthy humour (grotesque realism), its suspension of hierarchy, its violation of conventions and its uncrowning of authority and all that was revered, found its greatest literary expression in Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel. For Baktin, Rabelais was able to mine the folk culture of carnival of the European Middle Ages with all its comic possibilities and irreverent attitudes towards theology and create a text both witty and polyphonous and one that was a commentary on the time in which he lived. Bakhtin’s suggestion of Gargantua and Pantagruel carrying the spirit of carnival and uncrowning accepted canons and styles could well apply to Epeli Hau‘ofa’s witty and irreverent Kisses in the Nederends. In the novel, Hau‘ofa celebrates the activities of the lower bodily stratum and satirises and uncrowns all that is scared and official.