ABSTRACT
Mikhail Bakhtin, from Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968 [originally published 1965]
[It is perhaps not insignificant that, coming to adulthood in a Russia overshadowed by Stalin’s dictatorship, Bakhtin should focus on cultural forms which resist totalized, monolithic meaning. Writing on the novel, he champions what he terms the ‘dialogic’ form, whose polyphony of competing voices stands in implicit critique of the unitary discourse of the ‘monologic’ work (Bakhtin 1982). He finds a similar resistance to sanctioned authority in Carnival. If official celebration reproduces the ideology of the ruling order (see Bristol), Bakhtin’s carnival does the reverse, inverting and mocking its rules and symbols, and denying its hierarchies – even refusing its separation of performer from spectator: ‘degrading’ all that is exalted and metaphysical to the level of the merely material to create a space free of official order. This anti-authoritarian logic is inherent to the event, for rather than expressing an abstract political theory which might itself become hegemonic, its libertarian ethos is born of a general, popular recognition that all socio-political systems are man-made, and hence ephemeral. In as much as all political regimes invest in symbols, hierarchies and codes of ‘proper’ conduct, Bakhtin’s theory is still relevant today, so that, in describing a species of event from the historical past, he also provides a model for radical cultural performance in the present.]
Carnival festivities and the comic spectacles and ritual connected with them had an important place in the life of medieval man. Besides carnivals proper, with their long and complex pageants and processions, there was the ‘feast of fools’ (testa stultorum) and the ‘feast of the ass’; there was a special free ‘Easter laughter’ (risus paschalis), consecrated by tradition. Moreover, nearly every Church feast had its comic folk aspect, which was also traditionally recognized. Such, for instance, were the parish feasts, usually marked by fairs and varied open-air amusements, with the participation of giants, dwarfs, monsters and trained animals. A carnival atmosphere reigned on days when mysteries and soties were produced. This atmosphere also pervaded such agricultural feasts as the harvesting of grapes (vendange) which was celebrated also in the city. Civil and social ceremonies and rituals took on a comic aspect as clowns and fools, constant participants in these festivals, mimicked serious rituals such as the tribute
rendered to the victors at tournaments, the transfer of feudal rights or the initiation of a knight. Minor occasions were also marked by comic protocol, as for instance the election of a king and queen to preside at a banquet ‘for laughter’s sake’ (roi pour rire). [. . .]
Because of their obvious sensuous character and their strong element of play, carnival images closely resemble certain artistic forms, namely the spectacle. In turn, medieval spectacles often tended toward carnival folk culture, the culture of the marketplace, and to a certain extent became one of its components. But the basic carnival nucleus of this culture is by no means a purely artistic form nor a spectacle and does not, generally speaking, belong to the sphere of art. It belongs to the borderline between art and life. In reality, it is life itself, but shaped according to a certain pattern of play.
