ABSTRACT
In Bakhtin’s view, the carnivalesque is a force which pervades the medieval popular culture of the street fair, and which finds a later literary expression in works such as Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel. The ‘culture of the marketplace’ finds expression through the celebration of what Bakhtin defines as the lower bodily stratum. In particular, the language of the ‘grotesque body’ becomes the quintessential expression of the carnivalesque spirit. The carnivalesque celebrations realise themselves through the perpetual circle of life and death, which, in turn, takes place via the bodily functions of the grotesque body itself. It is by referring to such categories as ‘the grotesque’ and such images as the marketplace, that author propose to develop a discourse which relates the work of Caryl Churchill to that of Ben Jonson. Discussing Jonson and carnival would not be possible without mentioning Bartholomew Fair.
