Bakhtin also drew attention to its “grotesque realism” and association with the unruly ‘lower body’, the ‘underworld’. However, other theorists (notably Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian literary theorist) have offered a more positive (and subversive) analysis: the carnivalesque represents a separate reality, independent of the ordinary hierarchical world, which offers alternatives to it and brings change, a process of liberation, destruction and renewal. Contemporaries, too, expressed similar views one metaphor they used was the need to allow gas to escape from wine barrels periodically to prevent them exploding. What did it all mean? They have often been seen by anthropologists (such as Victor Turner and Max Gluckman) in terms of a ‘safety valve’ theory – ‘rituals of rebellion’ that allow controlled, safe release of the tensions of hierarchical society, set apart from the normal and everyday world. The forms of topsy-turvy inversion were widely varied: the ‘low’ imitated the ‘high’ with their mock kings, bishops, their cross-dressing, their inversions of pious rites, their mocking satires. There were processions, performances, plays, centring on the theme of ‘the world turned upside down’ (the land of Cockaigne, die verkehrte Welt, le monde renversé, il mondo alla rovescia). ‘Abbeys of Misrule’ (who gave their ‘officers’ names playing on themes of folly, pleasure, youth) often played important roles in organising Carnivals. Food and violence alike were often essential part of the rituals (such as the mock trials and ‘executions’ of pigs in Venice), as was sex (real and in imagery and innuendo). (These rowdy activities incurred increasing disapproval, and were progressively purged from the festive calendar.)Ĭarnival and carnivalesque disputed and mocked the ‘normal rules’ of order and morality. Their ‘bishop’, dressed in full regalia, delivered nonsense prayers and sermons, marched backwards in procession. But there were many other carnivalesque festivities through the year, including those of May Day, Midsummer, harvest festivals in late summer, All Fools Day in late December.įor example, the late-medieval ‘Feast of Fools’ was organised by young clergy they elected a Bishop of the Fools, put on vestments backwards, held the missal upside down, danced and drank in the church, sang obscene songs and insulted the congregation. Carnival ‘proper’ (most enthusiastically celebrated in the warmer climes of southern Europe) was a season of excess just before and in contrast to the fasting and abstinence of Lent. They caught my imagination as a first-year undergraduate taking my first early modern history course, which focused on ‘popular culture’ in early modern Europe (and was a real revelation, largely to blame for my subsequently taking the early modern path in history…). Carnivals and ‘carnivalesque’ festivals were ubiquitous throughout medieval and early modern Europe, full of rich symbolic imagery and disuptive potential. I’m not sure, though, that these carnivalists know what kind of fire they’re playing with. Detail from Pieter Bruegel the Elder, ‘The Battle between Carnival and Lent’ (1559) (from Artchive)Īs an early modernist, the discovery of blog ‘carnivals’ particularly caught my interest.
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