Rabelais and His World by Mikhail Bakhtin

Bakhtin describes this situation of lack of hierarchy as a temporary suspension. In carnivals, ranks of people were no longer valid every participant was equal, thus the true human experience was lived. One of the important aspects of the carnival activity is about hierarchy. The festivity had a practical content, also had spiritual and ideological ones, which evolves it into a position in which particular philosophical content occurs. In the line between art and life, carnival people were experiencing both real and the ideal, and that was the reason why carnivals were second-life of people. It was referring all humanity and the extra humane and earthly subjects such as planets as well. According to him, the two world condition is crucial in the way that it enables us to fully understand Renaissance and Medieval cultural consciousness. Carnivals, unlike official, feudal, political ceremonies, were offering a kind of nonofficial type of worldly experience. There were no footlights everyone was participating. Moreover, there was no distinction between spectators and actors. Carnivals were standing between art and life. Additionally there was a distinction between the two concepts carnivals and theatrical performances. He states that the form of carnivals was distinct from the official ceremonies. He divides this main heading in three categories ritual spectacles, comic verbal compositions, various genres of billingsgate, and tries to interpret the human behaviors in carnival activities. He intends to reconstruct a new method in order to evaluate his writings accordingly and therefore begins to define important characteristics of folk culture.

For him, Rabelais is the most difficult classical author of world literature and it is impossible to understand him with ongoing artistic and ideological conceptions. Mikhail Bakhtin begins his work, Rabelais and His World with an introductory essay.

Rabelais and His World by Mikhail Bakhtin