Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque : a dimension in the fiction of Margaret Laurence
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Date
1990
Authors
Prizeman, Leslie Victoria
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Abstract
Bakhtin considers the carnivalistic to be a fundamental root of the novelistic genre. He sees the carnivalesque as having its roots in Socratic Dialogue and Menippean Satire. The novelistic genre has three fundamental roots and one of these is the carnivalistic. Bakhtin further traces the roots of the carnivalesque to folk culture where he sees the lower strata of culture as more important than the official culture in a social hierarchy. One aspect of the work of the Russian literary theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin, examines the concept of the carnivalesque as it is transposed into the language of the novel. A Bakhtinian analysis is applied to three novels of Margaret Laurence's Manawaka Cycle, The Stone Anqel, A Jest of God, and The Diviners. The carnivalesque resists certainty, often in irreverent ways as do these works of Margaret Laurence. In essence, this resistance is achieved through a breaking of the harmonies of the language or the dialogue of the novel. The first chapter is a presentation of the theories of Bakhtin as they apply to the carnivalesque and an examination of the Bakhtinian paradigms of the carnivalesque. Chapters two, three, and four contain an application of the various paradigms such as grotesque realism, carnival laughter, and the other rituals of carnival to the Laurence novels. The carnivalesque resists certainties as do the Laurence novels of the Manawaka cycle. Laurence's vision encompasses the vision of Bakhtin and the ambivalent, power of carnival laughter. The folk culture and the carnivalesque, both of which are central to Bakhtin's concept of art is paralleled in Margaret Laurence's cosmic vision. Laurence novel's, read in a Bakhtinian "dialogue", attest to a profound understanding of the eternal from another dimension, the carnivalesque. Laurence's novels, like Bakhtin, proclaim: "nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the world, the ultimate word of the world and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open and free, everything is still in the future and will always be in the future."