Carnivalesque

Carnivalesque is a term that refers to the license, merrymaking, conviviality, and overturning of hierarchies often associated with Carnival. The concept was first formulated by the Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), who saw the carnivalesque as a vital force in historical resistance to oppression. Bakhtin viewed the carnivalesque in a Marxist political framework, but critics have since expanded the concept to the joyous subversion of any kind of status quo, whether in literature, manners, social roles, or other realms.

What all definitions have in common is a view of the carnivalesque as high-spirited and transgressive, generally festive in nature. This does not mean that the carnivalesque is enacted only in times of formal festivals, but rather that the carnivalesque kindles a festive air whenever it is produced. Bakhtin himself described three occasions that embodied the carnivalesque, though he most likely did not intend to limit the phenomenon to only three. His examples were ritual spectacles, comic verbal compositions, and imprecations. In discussing the carnivalesque, he identified a number of medieval ritual spectacles that exemplified the form, including Carnival itself, [Page 110]the Feast of Fools, and other specific Church festivals, as well as agricultural festivals, comic plays, and a variety of festive secular ceremonies. Thus Bakhtin's conception of the carnivalesque had a strong social and performative component. This view aligns Bakhtin's ideas with those of anthropologists such as Victor Turner, who developed an idea of social or personal transformation that takes place by means of a ritual temporary inversion of norms, a kind of structured mini-carnival. In Turner's (1969) examples drawn from the Nbembo of Africa, to bring about the passage of an individual from one life stage to another the person might be metaphorically suspended between different states. This puts the initiate in a liminal zone, considered, for example, neither alive nor dead, neither child nor adult, neither male nor female, and so forth. This liminal state helps effect the individual's transformation and is often accompanied by grotesque and exaggerated symbols and representations. Hence, the ritual is not comic as such, but might be called playful or ludic. This entry discusses the debate over the role of the carnivalesque in society and its appearance in literature, theater, and contemporary culture.