4.12.2006
Rabelais and His World (Narrative)
Title
Bakhtin, Mikail. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.
Field
Narrative
Summary
In this detailed study, Bakhtin explores the work of Rabelais and its relation to the carnivalesque (the popular, the humerous, the grotesque). "Rabelais' images have a certain undestroyable nature. No dogma, no authoritarianism, no narrow-minded seriousness can coexist with Rabelaisian images; these images are opposed to all that is finished and polished, to all pomposity, to every ready-made solution in the sphere of thought and world outlook."(3) "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." (7)The parody staged by the carnival/folk cutlure is not merely a negative, it is an inside-outing of the non-carnivalesque. The carnival laughter is of the people (not the individual), it is universal and it is ambiguous. The feast and the carnival are linked (and linked in their relationship to time, but more on that later.) Humorous folk language is marked by abusive language and the concept of grotesque realism. "The material bodily principle in grotesque realism is offered in its all-popular festive and utopian aspect. The cosmic, social and bodily elements are given here as an indivisible whole. And this whole is gay and gracious...the body and bodily life have here a cosmic and at the same time an all-people's character; this is not the body and its physiology in the modern sense of these words, beacuse it is not individualized. The material bodily principle is contained not in the biological individual, not in the bourgeois ego, but in the people, a people who are continually growing and renewed. This is why all that is bodily becomes grandiose, exaggerated, immeasurable."(19) Part of grotesque realism is its power to degrade, bring down to earth, make fleshy. "Degredation here means coming down to earth, the contact with earth as an element that swallows up and gives birth at the same time...to degrade means to concern oneself with the lower stratum of the body, the life of the belly and the reproductive organs; it therefore related to acts of defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth. Degredation digs a bodily grave for a new birth; it has not only a destructive, negative aspect, but also a regenerating one."(21) "The grotesque image reflects a phenomenon in transformation, an as yet unfinished metamorphosis, of death and birth, growth and becoming. The relation to time is one determining trait of the grotesque image. THe other indispensible trait is ambivalence. For in this image we find both poles of transformation, the old and the new, the dying and the procreating, the beginning and the end of the metamorphosis." (24) The grotesque body is open to the world, it is contiguous with it, that is why it focuses so much upon the reproductive ograns, the anus, the mouth, the nose - the holes and the protrusions. All this humor and grotequerie finds its apex in the Renaissance, particularly in the work of Rabelais. In later periods (the Romantic), the grosteque is alienated from man and the body. "The bodily participation in the potentiality of another world, the bodily awareness of another world has an immense importance for the groteque."(48) New types of realism, as opposed to the grotesque, that came about in the later periods are static, the emphasize boundaries, it changed the notion of time housed in the grotesque. The chapters of the book deal with various ways that folk humor and the grotesque are represented in Rabelais' work and "to show the oneness and meaning of folk humor, its general ideological, philosophical and aesthetic essence." (58) The first chapter examines the history of laughter and the characteristics of laughter in the Renaissance (Rabelais' time). "For the Renaissance...the characteristic trait of laughter was precisely the recognition of its positive, regenerating, creative meaning."(71) Laughter emerged from folk culture and was essential in festivals and other gatherings of the folk. "Besides univeralism and freedom, the third important trait of laughter was its relation to the people's unofficial truth."(90)
"True ambivalent and universal laughter does not deny seriousness but purifies and completes it. Laughter purifies from dogmatism, from the intolerant and the petrified; it liberates from fanaticism and pedantry, from fear and intimidation, from didacticism, naivete and illusion, from the single meaning, the single level, from sentimentality." (123) The second chapter deals with the language of the marketplace, the food (tripe) found there, the voices of the hawkers, the quacks who practised medicine there - "All of them, independently of their literal content, refer to the unofficial aspect of thhe world, unofficial in tonr (laughter) and in contents (the lower stratum). All of them relate to the world's gay matter, which is born, dies and gives birth, is devoured and devours; this is the world which continually grows and multiplies, becomes ever greater and better, ever more abundant. Gay matter is ambivalent, it is the grave and generating womb, the receding past and the advancing future, the becoming." (195) The next chapter examines the popular-festive forms in Rabelais - scenes of battle, thrashings, uncrownings, games and fortune telling, etc. "The exterior freedom of popular-festive forms was inseperable from their inner freedom, and from their positive outlook on the world. Together with this new positive outlook, they brought the right to express it with impugnity."(271) The next chapter looks at the banquet in Rabelais. "Eating and drinking are one of the most significant manifestations of the grotesque body. The distinctive character of this body is its open, unfinished nature, its interaction with the world." (281) "In the act of eating...the confines between body and the world are overstepped by the body; it triumphs over the world, over its enemy, celebrates its victory, grows at the world's expense." (283) "The popular images of food and drink are active and triumphant, for the conclude the process of labor and struggle of the social man against the world."(302) Chapter five focuses on the grotesque body. "In the grotesque body...death brings nothing to an end, for it does not concern the ancestral body, which is renewed in the next generation." (322) Urine is the connection of the body with the sea, shit its connection with the earth. By integrating the cosmic into the body, the cosmic (that which is so vast that it can not be conquered and is thus, terrifying) is integrated into humor. Some sources for the grotesque body include folklore on giants and tales from India. "In the grotesqye concept of the body a new, concrete, and realistic historic awareness was born and took form: not abstract thought about the future but the living sense that each man belongs to the immortal people who create history."(367) The 6th chapter focus on the "lower stratum" of the body. "The mighty thrust downward into the bowels of the earth, into the depths of the human body, is reflected in Rabelais' entire world from beginning to end."(370) "Death is an ambivalent image for Rabelais and for the popular sources from which he drew his material; therefore, death can be gay...Where death is, there also is birth, change, renewal. The image of birth is no less ambivalent; it represents the body that is born and at the same time shows a glimpse of the departing one...All these ambivalent images are dual-bodied, dual-faced, pregnant. They combine in various proportions negation and affirmation, the top and the bottom, abuse and praise."(409) The last chapter looks at Rabelais in terms of his time and the place of his writing in history. "we may say that in Rabelais' novel the cosmic breath of the muth is combined with the directness of a modern survey and the concrete precision of a realist novel. Beyond the images that may appear fantastic we find real events, living persons, and the author's own rich experience and sharp observation." (438) Rabelais work is like "an encyclopedia of a new world." (455) because it recorded so much of the folk humor, forms of language of the market place, ways of medical practice, etc. Finally, Bahktin talks about the historical moment of the breakdown of the church language and the ascendancy of the vernacular as particularly important for Rabelais and the grotesque. "Languages are philosophies - not abstract but concrete, social philosophies, penetrated by a system of values inseperable from living practice and class struggle. This is why every object, every concept, every point of view, as well as every intonation found their place at this intersection of linguistic philosophies and was drawn into an intense ideological struggle. In these exceptional conditions, linguistic dogmatism or naivety became impossible." (471) "In Rabelais freedom of laughter, consecrated by the tradition of popular-festive forms, was raised to a higher level of ideological consciousness, thanks to the victory over linguistic dogmatism. The defeat of this most obstinate and secret element was possible only through intense interorientation and mutual clarification of languages which took place at that time. Linguistic life enacted that same drama: simultaneous death and birth, the aging and renewal of separate forms and meanings as well as of entire philosophies."(473)
Keywords
Carnavalesque, Folk, Grotesque Realism, Humor, Play, Gay, Laughter,
Other Thoughts
pg 367: the idea that in the middle ages things were hierachy, veritcal, in the renaissance it is horizontal, all integrated.
"One of the essential traits of Rabelais' stle is that all proper nouns on the one hand, and on the other hand all the names of objects and phenomena, tend to extremes in abusive-laudatory nicknames. Thanks to this process, all objects and phenomena of Rabelais' world acquire a peculiar individuality of praise-abuse. In this individualizing torrent of abusive-laudatory words the dividing lines between persons and objects are weakened; all of them become participants in the carnival drama of the simultaneous death of the old world and birth of the new."(463)
Bakhtin, Mikail. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.
Field
Narrative
Summary
In this detailed study, Bakhtin explores the work of Rabelais and its relation to the carnivalesque (the popular, the humerous, the grotesque). "Rabelais' images have a certain undestroyable nature. No dogma, no authoritarianism, no narrow-minded seriousness can coexist with Rabelaisian images; these images are opposed to all that is finished and polished, to all pomposity, to every ready-made solution in the sphere of thought and world outlook."(3) "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." (7)The parody staged by the carnival/folk cutlure is not merely a negative, it is an inside-outing of the non-carnivalesque. The carnival laughter is of the people (not the individual), it is universal and it is ambiguous. The feast and the carnival are linked (and linked in their relationship to time, but more on that later.) Humorous folk language is marked by abusive language and the concept of grotesque realism. "The material bodily principle in grotesque realism is offered in its all-popular festive and utopian aspect. The cosmic, social and bodily elements are given here as an indivisible whole. And this whole is gay and gracious...the body and bodily life have here a cosmic and at the same time an all-people's character; this is not the body and its physiology in the modern sense of these words, beacuse it is not individualized. The material bodily principle is contained not in the biological individual, not in the bourgeois ego, but in the people, a people who are continually growing and renewed. This is why all that is bodily becomes grandiose, exaggerated, immeasurable."(19) Part of grotesque realism is its power to degrade, bring down to earth, make fleshy. "Degredation here means coming down to earth, the contact with earth as an element that swallows up and gives birth at the same time...to degrade means to concern oneself with the lower stratum of the body, the life of the belly and the reproductive organs; it therefore related to acts of defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth. Degredation digs a bodily grave for a new birth; it has not only a destructive, negative aspect, but also a regenerating one."(21) "The grotesque image reflects a phenomenon in transformation, an as yet unfinished metamorphosis, of death and birth, growth and becoming. The relation to time is one determining trait of the grotesque image. THe other indispensible trait is ambivalence. For in this image we find both poles of transformation, the old and the new, the dying and the procreating, the beginning and the end of the metamorphosis." (24) The grotesque body is open to the world, it is contiguous with it, that is why it focuses so much upon the reproductive ograns, the anus, the mouth, the nose - the holes and the protrusions. All this humor and grotequerie finds its apex in the Renaissance, particularly in the work of Rabelais. In later periods (the Romantic), the grosteque is alienated from man and the body. "The bodily participation in the potentiality of another world, the bodily awareness of another world has an immense importance for the groteque."(48) New types of realism, as opposed to the grotesque, that came about in the later periods are static, the emphasize boundaries, it changed the notion of time housed in the grotesque. The chapters of the book deal with various ways that folk humor and the grotesque are represented in Rabelais' work and "to show the oneness and meaning of folk humor, its general ideological, philosophical and aesthetic essence." (58) The first chapter examines the history of laughter and the characteristics of laughter in the Renaissance (Rabelais' time). "For the Renaissance...the characteristic trait of laughter was precisely the recognition of its positive, regenerating, creative meaning."(71) Laughter emerged from folk culture and was essential in festivals and other gatherings of the folk. "Besides univeralism and freedom, the third important trait of laughter was its relation to the people's unofficial truth."(90)
"True ambivalent and universal laughter does not deny seriousness but purifies and completes it. Laughter purifies from dogmatism, from the intolerant and the petrified; it liberates from fanaticism and pedantry, from fear and intimidation, from didacticism, naivete and illusion, from the single meaning, the single level, from sentimentality." (123) The second chapter deals with the language of the marketplace, the food (tripe) found there, the voices of the hawkers, the quacks who practised medicine there - "All of them, independently of their literal content, refer to the unofficial aspect of thhe world, unofficial in tonr (laughter) and in contents (the lower stratum). All of them relate to the world's gay matter, which is born, dies and gives birth, is devoured and devours; this is the world which continually grows and multiplies, becomes ever greater and better, ever more abundant. Gay matter is ambivalent, it is the grave and generating womb, the receding past and the advancing future, the becoming." (195) The next chapter examines the popular-festive forms in Rabelais - scenes of battle, thrashings, uncrownings, games and fortune telling, etc. "The exterior freedom of popular-festive forms was inseperable from their inner freedom, and from their positive outlook on the world. Together with this new positive outlook, they brought the right to express it with impugnity."(271) The next chapter looks at the banquet in Rabelais. "Eating and drinking are one of the most significant manifestations of the grotesque body. The distinctive character of this body is its open, unfinished nature, its interaction with the world." (281) "In the act of eating...the confines between body and the world are overstepped by the body; it triumphs over the world, over its enemy, celebrates its victory, grows at the world's expense." (283) "The popular images of food and drink are active and triumphant, for the conclude the process of labor and struggle of the social man against the world."(302) Chapter five focuses on the grotesque body. "In the grotesque body...death brings nothing to an end, for it does not concern the ancestral body, which is renewed in the next generation." (322) Urine is the connection of the body with the sea, shit its connection with the earth. By integrating the cosmic into the body, the cosmic (that which is so vast that it can not be conquered and is thus, terrifying) is integrated into humor. Some sources for the grotesque body include folklore on giants and tales from India. "In the grotesqye concept of the body a new, concrete, and realistic historic awareness was born and took form: not abstract thought about the future but the living sense that each man belongs to the immortal people who create history."(367) The 6th chapter focus on the "lower stratum" of the body. "The mighty thrust downward into the bowels of the earth, into the depths of the human body, is reflected in Rabelais' entire world from beginning to end."(370) "Death is an ambivalent image for Rabelais and for the popular sources from which he drew his material; therefore, death can be gay...Where death is, there also is birth, change, renewal. The image of birth is no less ambivalent; it represents the body that is born and at the same time shows a glimpse of the departing one...All these ambivalent images are dual-bodied, dual-faced, pregnant. They combine in various proportions negation and affirmation, the top and the bottom, abuse and praise."(409) The last chapter looks at Rabelais in terms of his time and the place of his writing in history. "we may say that in Rabelais' novel the cosmic breath of the muth is combined with the directness of a modern survey and the concrete precision of a realist novel. Beyond the images that may appear fantastic we find real events, living persons, and the author's own rich experience and sharp observation." (438) Rabelais work is like "an encyclopedia of a new world." (455) because it recorded so much of the folk humor, forms of language of the market place, ways of medical practice, etc. Finally, Bahktin talks about the historical moment of the breakdown of the church language and the ascendancy of the vernacular as particularly important for Rabelais and the grotesque. "Languages are philosophies - not abstract but concrete, social philosophies, penetrated by a system of values inseperable from living practice and class struggle. This is why every object, every concept, every point of view, as well as every intonation found their place at this intersection of linguistic philosophies and was drawn into an intense ideological struggle. In these exceptional conditions, linguistic dogmatism or naivety became impossible." (471) "In Rabelais freedom of laughter, consecrated by the tradition of popular-festive forms, was raised to a higher level of ideological consciousness, thanks to the victory over linguistic dogmatism. The defeat of this most obstinate and secret element was possible only through intense interorientation and mutual clarification of languages which took place at that time. Linguistic life enacted that same drama: simultaneous death and birth, the aging and renewal of separate forms and meanings as well as of entire philosophies."(473)
Keywords
Carnavalesque, Folk, Grotesque Realism, Humor, Play, Gay, Laughter,
Other Thoughts
pg 367: the idea that in the middle ages things were hierachy, veritcal, in the renaissance it is horizontal, all integrated.
"One of the essential traits of Rabelais' stle is that all proper nouns on the one hand, and on the other hand all the names of objects and phenomena, tend to extremes in abusive-laudatory nicknames. Thanks to this process, all objects and phenomena of Rabelais' world acquire a peculiar individuality of praise-abuse. In this individualizing torrent of abusive-laudatory words the dividing lines between persons and objects are weakened; all of them become participants in the carnival drama of the simultaneous death of the old world and birth of the new."(463)
# posted by SMRT : 6:52 PM
