Rabelais and His World

by Mikhail Bakhtin, Hélène Iswolsky (Translator)

This classic work by the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895—1975) examines popular humor and folk culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, especially the world of carnival, as depicted in the novels of François Rabelais. In Bakhtin's view, the spirit of laughter and irreverence prevailing at carnival time is the dominant quality of Rabelais's art. The work of both Rabelais and Bakhtin springs from an age of revolution, and each reflects a particularly open sense of the literary text. For both, carnival, with its emphasis on the earthly and the grotesque, signified the symbolic destruction of authority and official culture and the assertion of popular renewal. Bakhtin evokes carnival as a special, creative life form, with its own space and time.

Written in the Soviet Union in the 1930s at the height of the Stalin era but published there for the first time only in 1965, Bakhtin's book is both a major contribution to the poetics of the novel and a subtle condemnation of the degeneration of the Russian revolution into Stalinist orthodoxy. One of the essential texts of a theorist who is rapidly becoming a major reference in contemporary thought, Rabelais and His World is essential reading for anyone interested in problems of language and text and in cultural interpretation.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Theory, Literary Criticism, Criticism, Literature

474 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Very influential writings of Russian linguist and literary critic Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in 20th-century poststructuralism and the social theory of the novel included Problems of Dostoyevsky's Works (1929, see Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky) and The Dialogic Imagination (1975).

This philosopher, semiotician, and scholar on ethics and the philosophy of language. He on a variety of subjects inspired scholars in a number of different traditions of Marxism, semiotics, and religionand in disciplines as diverse as history, philosophy, anthropology, and psychology. Although Bakhtin acted in the debates on aesthetics that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, scholars rediscovered his not well known distinctive position in the 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail...

Reviews

[Michael Perkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Laughter must liberate the gay truth of the world from the veils of gloomy lies spun by religion, politics and economics."

===================

Some fascinating connections between Don Quixote (which I just reread) and the humor of Rabelais (d. 1553) and his world that influenced Cervantes (d. 1616). First, a mocking of institutions that were held in solemn regard, whether it was the Church for Rabelais or the ludicrous chivalry represented by the knight errancy of Don Q. Second, the bodily humor of Gargantua and Pantagruel and the earthiness of many of the dialogues between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, contra the fussy spiritualism of the ascetics.

"Sancho's fat belly (in Spanish, panza), his appetite and thirst convey a carnivalesque spirit."

A very poignant example comes in Part 2, Book 1, Chapter 20, of Don Quixote, where Don Q and Sancho come upon a rich wedding feast. Don Q is still obsessed with finding his love, Dulcinea of Toboso, but Sancho is immediately drawn to the food and gorges on doves, hares, chickens, suckling pigs, and "various kinds of fowl hanging from the trees." And drinks a seemingly endless supply of wine. Sancho sees this feast as a kind of reward for all that he has been through with his Master and also because he has not yet been awarded his insular [island].

And, of course, the entire story of Quixote is one big carnival of windmills (giants), inns (castles), flocks of rams and sheep (armies of knights), innkeepers (lords of the castle), prostitutes (noble ladies) and so forth.

Like Cervantes, Shakespeare (d. 1616, same year as Cervantes) was significantly influenced by the writings of Rabelais, as shown most clearly in the character of Falstaff (Henry IV)....

"A man at once young and old, enterprising and fat, a dupe and a wit, harmless and wicked, weak in principle and resolute by constitution, cowardly in appearance and brave in reality, a knave without malice, a liar without deceit, and a knight, a gentleman, and a soldier without either dignity, decency, or honor."

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

[This is a review of three interrelated books: Moby Dick, Gargantua and Patragruel, and Baktin’s study, Rabelais and His World. Same review posted in all three places.]

In others, the nose grew so much that it looked like the spout of a retort, striped all over and starred with little pustules, pullulating, purpled, pimpled, enameled, studded, and embroidered gules, as you have seen in the cases of Canon Bellybag and of Clubfoot, the Angers physician…

Others grew in the length of their bodies, from whom came the giants, and from them Pantagruel. [a Biblical series of begats] …

Since I was not alive in that age I will cite the cite the authority of the Massoretes, good ballocky fellows and fine Hebraic bagpipers, who affirm that in fact Hurtali was not in Noah’s Ark. Indeed, he could not get in, for he was too big. But he sat astride of it, with one foot on each side, as small children do on hobby-horses, or as the great Bull of Berne, who was killed at Marignan, riding astride on a great stone-hurling canon, which is undoubtedly a beast, of a fine, jolly pace. [Gargantua and Pantagruel]

When, good heavens! What a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark, purplish, yellow color, here and there stuck over with large, blackish looking squares… Ishmael, on first beholding Queequeg.

Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet his deformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural terror, as that unexampled, intelligent malignity which, according to specific accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his assaults…and then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab’s leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice.… [ Moby Dick]

Renaissance grotesque imagery, directly related to folk carnival culture, as we find it in Rableais, Cervantes, and Shakespeare, influenced the entire realistic literature of the following centuries. Realism of grand style, in Stendhal, Balzac, Hugo, and Dickens, for instance, was always linked directly or indirectly with the Renaissance tradition. Breaking away from this tradition diminished the scope of realism and transformed it into naturalist empiricism. Bakhtin Rabelais and His World

Millions of words have been written about these books, so this will be a review limited to a serendipitous reading.

My reading plan for 2015 includes both Moby Dick (read decades ago) and Gargantua and Pantagruel. I started MD (immediately bowled over by Melville) and a few days later G&P. As noted in my updates, suddenly I found myself reading, on the same day, a chapter in MD on the color white (ghostly, forboding, fear-inducing), and a chapter in G&P on the colors white and blue (white: joy, solace, and gladness). What had happened between 1530 and 1852? Had Melville read Rabelais?

It turns out that not only had Melville read Rabelais, but he had read him only a year or two previously in a great binge of classics, and his novel Mardi immediately preceding MD was criticized as too dependent on Rabelais. So I read on, looking for influences and adding the Russian Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World to my co-reading adventure. Bakhtin comments extensively on how the Romantics lost the joyful, regenerative aspect of the grotesque that abounds in Rabelais, a concept that strongly colored the way I read the rest of the novels. I have read additional bits of biography and other criticism as I went along, but mostly this review is an unmediated reaction to these three books.

While Bakhtin doesn’t mention Melville, MD might be a case study in the turn from the original Carnival to the negation of the elements of Carnival that are critical to the Renaissance buoyancy and positive life in Rabelais. On land, Ishmael and Queequeg revel in oyster stew and their physicality; they proceed by happenstance and whim. On the Pequod life is ruled by bells and rank, and absolute hierarchy reigns: Starbuck is repeatedly rebuked for respectfully, even piously, suggesting the monomaniacal chase is ill-chosen. This is the complete reverse of the Feast of Fools atmosphere of Carnival, where the lowly can say anything to the powerful, and a commoner is elected King or Pope for a day.

A selection of observations (note: many spoilers below):

First of all, of course, one confronts the revolving omnibus approach to the novel. These two gargantuan works encompass everything: satire, broad humor, slapstick, tragedy, scientific treatises, battles, quests, erudition, philosophical reflections, psychology, political and religious satire and commentary, exploration, the ocean, the bonds formed by men fighting the elements and the enemy, food, and so much more. Melville clearly learned the power of this, and must have studied Rabelais’s method carefully. And yet his novel is more tightly linear in plot, by design as well as due to his writing it as one coherent work, while Rabelais published G&P over twenty years (1532-1552).

Then there is the observant narrator. In MD he dominates the first sentence: ‘Call me Ishmael." In G&P, in contrast, I think I was a quarter of the way through before the ‘I’ first appeared. ‘I’? Who is this? The reader never finds out, and only encounters ‘I’ a few more times. How is ‘I’ that different from Ishmael, who after selecting the Pequod, never enters the action again? An issue that would take much thought.

The grandiose ruler who destroys his kingdom: Ahab and Picrochole.

Discourses on rope: the harpoon line and hemp.

Science. Melville was writing in the midst of a scientific world; philology and geology had led to questions about the Bible, and evolution was I think fairly commonly discussed, even if Darwin’s theory of natural selection was a few years in the future. Unknown lands were being explored. (Although Ishmael still insists the whale is a fish.) The industrial revolution meant the mechanics of everything were of interest, and the mechanics of whaling populate every page. Similarly, Rabelais’s medicine permeates G&P, with equal importance: the body is ever-present. He has a long explanation of the circulation of the blood. In battles, no one is ever just run through with a lance: the path through every organ and tendon is detailed. The guts and genitals of the Carnival are evolving into a Renaissance awareness of anatomy and science.

The practical joke. Panurge’s and Villon’s violent practical jokes that have serious physical consequences for their victims, contrasted with Stubb’s practical joke on the French captain (‘rescuing’ him from the noxious fumes of the whale filled with ambergris), with its serious financial consequences. Attention has turned from the body to profit.

The repeated advice from outsiders to cease and desist. In G&P, much of Book Three is devoted to soliciting both friendly and ‘professional’ (fortune-tellers and seers) advice for Panurge: should he marry? No, they all agree he will be a cuckold in short order, beaten and robbed. Similarly, Ahab is advised by Starbuck, the English Captain and the other Nantucket captain who has lost his son to give up this irrational and doomed chase. But neither Ahab nor Panurge can be reached—they are consumed by their passions. But then, neither do Ishmael and Queequeg heed Elijah when he warns them about Ahab. So their last land-based encounter with Elijah could be looked at as a turning point between whim and unswerving mission. In any case, both Panurge and Ahab end up pursuing their passionate quest in a ship, and barely survivin a tremendous storm.

One of the most complex comparisons between the two novels involves Panurge and Pip. This is because Pip is so dependent on the intervening Shakespeare’s fools, but I think the link to the terrified Panurge (as the storm at sea rages) is still there in Pip.

Religion: Rabelais was a monk, although perhaps a reluctant one. He also trained as a physician, and, unusual for his time, knew Greek. Bakhtin backs the critic Lucien Febvre’s stance that Rabelais could not have been a rationalist atheist, as claimed by Abel Lefranc, because his culture did not enable him to have such a thought. Hard to say. G&P certainly overflows with rapacious and salacious priests, harsh satire on sellers of indulgences and well-fed monks, etc. Rival orders parade through one story after another. And yet, one doesn’t feel totally engaged in real theological issues. Very different from MD, where not only the differences between Quaker and Congregationalist, but between south seas wooden idols and Fedallah’s Zorastrianism matter. [However, my copy of G&P had very few footnotes, so I may have missed 90% of Rabelais’s comments on religion. That inability to understand much of Rabelais without help because of so many intervening centuries was frustrating. I have ordered Screech’s translation of G&P, which apparently has much more complete notes.]

One of the most interesting religious questions is about vengeance. Ahab goes to his death defying the Biblical ‘Vengeance is mine’ saith the Lord. There is plenty of vengeance in the Carnival life of G&P, including the utterly unjustified shaming of the Lady of Paris by Panurge, and the physical destruction of the monk who will not loan clerical garb to Villon for a Carnival play. This is contrasted by the complete forgiveness exhibited by Gargantua in the non-Carnival ‘plot’ to those who have attacked his country, caused war with its accompanying destruction and death. He is magnanimous in victory.

One has to read Melville on ‘vengeance is mine’ in its time: against the looming Civil War. As I noted in my progress notes, he also wrote on property rights (Fast Whales and Loose Whales) shortly after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.

There is so much more to say. These are books I will think about and come back to, I know.

A word on editions: I listened to Anthony Heald read Moby Dick; he was fabulous. The scientific sections were full of expression, let alone the ‘story’ chapters. Hard copy: I have not yet explored the material, but I think the critical apparatus in the Norton edition of Moby Dick will be very useful, even if the Rockwell Kent illustrations in the Modern Library edition are lovely. Rabelais: as mentioned above, I felt as though I was missing a lot in the Penguin edition of G&P (Cohen translation) so have ordered the Screech translation, which is supposed to have more help. And to be a good, alternative translation. And on Bakhtin: yes, he is repetitive, but worth it; much to think about there.

[Ανδριάννα · Rating 5 out of 5]

Πολύ ενδιαφέρων ακόμα και αν δεν έχεις διαβάσει του Rabelais
Όπως δεν έχω κάνει και εγώ αλλα θα φροντίσω να προμηθευτώ τα βιβλία του

[Jan-Maat]

Dostoevsky and Rabelais may strike you as a pears and pepper combination but for literary critic and collective farm bookkeeper Mikhail Bakhtin the two went as naturally together as rice and peas or bread and cheese.

In both of them he found the spirit of the medieval carnival, boy bishops and the Lord of Misrule. Here was the world turned upside down and a blast of equal voices in concert. It was all at least ten years too late and in the context of Stalin's Russia Bakhtin was wise enough to appreciate that his literary opinions were running counter to the times he found himself in and so he took himself off to Kazhakstan and reinvented himself as a bookkeeper. An act which was in keeping with his literary insights.

I remember this as a fresh and an exciting read. What can I say - I was young once and a student, it takes further some ideas present in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics and extends them to Rabelais and then to Roman novels with carnival elements.

[sologdin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a pet boa constrictor years ago, and I popped him in a bag along with this book for a cross-country drive, during which time he shat all over the book. I think that's kickass appropriate, but perhaps no more appropriate than had it been kristeva, bataille, or deleuze.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love to use Bakhtin's ideas in my teaching. I'm particularly partial to his early thought, but this book is great for helping student see the importance of humor.

Bakhtin discusses mideval humor and how it was deeply political. In fact, he finds it deeply revolutionary.

You can't oppress someone who is laughing at you.

What joy!

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

In our present new Dark Age, I recommend this book highly. Bakhtin’s hilarious tome contains currents of resistance, subversion, and the return of grotesque humor (i.e. Rabelasian) of carnival fused with mockery of religion & the so-called ‘ruling class.’ Bakhtin’s compelling argument is that the yeasty Dark Ages were funnier than Renaissance comedy for not excluding lower body functions, noises, stenches, and broad vulgarity in that era’s art, satire, & festival. Heartier, truer laughter ensued from Rabelais than did from Cervantes later, according to our author. When Aristos adapted peasant carnivals into court masques, they not only excluded the lower bodily functions but the organs thereof. Bakhtin’s peasants with their earthy belly laughs were thematically echoed in 20th century developments such as Bataille’s secret society of Acephale- headless Dionysos with labyrinthine guts, and the ‘body without organs’ of Deleuze and Guattari. The detached, refined work of the alleged Renaissance devolved from vital carnival rebellion and satirical mockery. Evidence is presented in analysis of the qualities of laughter, concluding that the full bodied laughter of the Dark Ages was more complete than effete Renaissance laughter. Hidden within this peculiar book are many suggestions for social, personal, and theatrical resistance. Clearly a new carnival culture is rising up in response to our abrupt Dark Age, and it’s time for mischievous freaks to plumb this pudding of a book for inspiration. Bakhtin had much to lose, as the book’s foreword explains. I have traveled to many places with this book in my backpack. I have read passages on community radio KNON. It’s a special book. Pass it along to the person in the next cell or bureaucratic work-farm cubical.

[Miloš · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bahtin je Prijatelj. prijateljevanje u posedu bez potrebe za posedovanjem prijatelja kao poseda. kao zajedičko proživljeno i zajednički govor.

[Zorlon Zorlon · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're like me, you find academic pedantry and over-analysis to be the worst kind of scholarship. Delving into a work of fiction with a meticulous and picking it apart is an insufferable effort and should be counted among the worst sins of "literary criticism", especially when the intention of the author, in this case five centuries dead, is most unclear. It's just unnecessary guesswork.
Bakhtin walks a fine line between this guesswork and an outright entertaining look at carnival culture, or what he interprets as carnival culture, in a kind of Carlo Ginzburgian-undercurrents mode, to show that Rabelais' crass humor and grotesque approach would've been very familiar to his contemporaries. In short, it represented a once-acceptable form of laughter against staid institutions like the Church and clericalism. It's a neat idea and probably has some basis in fact, but he goes to wacky lengths to try and prove his argument, delving into semantic minutiae which quickly becomes dull. He ironically shines when he's throwing out his insane theories on this carnival culture and its subtle survivals, but fades elsewhere into dullardism.

[Dusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

You probably already know Bakhtin's story. A brilliant Russian theorist with a touch of what Baudelaire called spleen, he wrote profound philosophical treatises that went largely unnoticed in his lifetime. After his death his rediscovered texts proved immensely influential -- particularly in literary studies and sociology. Rabelais and His World deals, of course, with the bawdy medieval narratives by French writer Rabelais, vaunted by Bakhtin as one of history's most indispensable yet underappreciated literary masters, and the book puts forward the enlightening concept of the carnivalesque. The problem, here, however, is that all this could probably have been done, and done well, in a thirty-page article or chapter rather than a 500-page book. I'm not sure I've ever read a work of critical theory so redundant, and I'm not sure I'm any better off having read 450 pages than I would have been had I stopped at a hundred. An important book to keep on my shelf, I guess, but rather a dog to read...

[Lavanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Objasnio!

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can carnival survive our shrill and humorless times when people are so quick to take offense and so fearful of giving offense?

[Czarny Pies · Rating 5 out of 5]

"L'œuvre de François Rebellais, et la culture populaire au Moyen Âge et sous la Renaissance" est un livre remarquable où l'auteur Mikhaïl Bakhtine présente un thèse très audacieux. Ce qui est plus étonnant encore est que Bakhtine trouve les moyens de le soutenir.
D'après Bakhtine, on trouve chez Rabelais l'expression d'une conscience de classe populaire au sens Marxiste qui se moque de la culture des classes dirigeantes et qui met bas toute hiérarchie. Bakhtine qualifie le style de Rabelais le réalisme grotesque pour signaler que tout chez Rabelais est exagéré. Le rire est l'arme principal de Rabelais et les parodies sont partout dans ses roman. Chez Rabelais la parodie est positive parce qu'elle renverse l'ancienne culture officielle et propose une nouvelle société strictement égalitaire.
Selon Bakhtine la culture populaire rieuse (ou le réalisme grotesque) s'était développée pendant le millénaire du Moyen Âge. Pendant la Renaissance plusieurs auteurs de la littérature officielle (Cervantès, Shakespeare parmi d'autres) se sont servis du réalisme grotesque mais c'est Rabelais qui l'a fait le plus brillamment. Pendant les siècles qui ont suivie la Renaissance après le rire et les parodies se sont mis au service des classes dirigeantes et ils sont devenus négatifs.
Rabelais abondamment des jurons, des blasphèmes et des grossièretés. Tout est axé sur le bas: c'est-à-dire le ventre et les organes génitaux parce le bas est régénératrice. La tendance ver le bas abolit la vieille hiérarchie et instaure un nouveau régime populaire.
Les fouilles aux Thermes de Titus pendant la Renaissance ont donné naissance au mouvement grotesque (c'est-à-dire le mouvement de l'art du grotte caractérisé par ridicule, bizarre et risible). Avec les jurons, blasphèmes et d'autres vulgarités chez Rabelais le grotesque est devenu réaliste.
On pense au début que les idées de Bakhtine sont folles , mais elles sont basées sur une grande érudition. Bakhtine connait très bien:
-1- les écrits de Rabelais
-2- les auteurs et philosophes de l'antiquité qui étaient à la base de la pensée de Rabelais (ce qui exigeait une grande connaissance du latin classique)
-3- les auteurs, théologiens et philosophes moyenâgeux (ce qui exigeait une grande connaissance du latin moyenâgeux)
-4- la culture populaire française moyenâgeuse: les farces, les pièces de théâtre, les contes, les blasons
-5- la culture carnavalesque (personnages, costumes, et les chansons)
-6- la littéraire de la Renaissance (romans, poèmes et pièces de théâtre.)
-7- le parcours de la culture européenne après Rabelais
Mes connaissances sont beaucoup moins vastes que celles de Bakhtine. Je dois reconnaitre que j'accepte les arguments de Bakhtine dans tous les domaines parce qu'ils me semblent être juste dans le moins grand nombre domaines que je connais. Je connais assez bien Rabelais et les auteurs (Cervantès, Shakespeare, Scarron, du Bellay, etc.) de la Renaissance qu'il cite. Aussi j'ai suivie des cours au premier cycle où Platon, Aristote, St. Augustin et St. Thomas Aquin étaient au programme. Par contre, avant de lire le livre Bakhtine tous les connaissances que j'avais de la culture carnavalesques me sont venues du carnaval de Québec. La culture populaire du Moyen Âge m'était complètement inconnus. Mes lacunes sont importantes parce que ce sont les analyses des cultures carnavalesque et populaires moyenâgeuses qui sont au cœur du livre de Bakhtine.
Mon appréciation de d'amateur ou de non-professionnelle est que la recherche qu'a fait Bakhtine est extraordinaire et que les jugements sont excellents. "L'œuvre de François Rebellais, et la culture populaire au Moyen Âge et sous la Renaissance" est un des meilleurs livres que j'ai lu dans les cinq dernières années. C'est à lire absolument pour tous ceux qui aiment la littérature française.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! At one time trash talking and irony wasn't just to cut the other guy down to size. It was meant to revitalize, revivify and renew. Feasting, loosing of bowels, a bit of the old in and out, beating someone until they are bloodied, crushed and readied for eating as mince meat and general debaucery at the wine keg are all activities of rebirth and regeneration and all around good fun in the middle ages...and sometimes,if you hang about the applicable crowd, one can find such activities existant in our more "enlightened" age. And usually real death does ensue.

I love Bakhtin. I think I really love his critique of Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel far more than I liked the actual fantastic novel by the French novelist. I tried reading it a couple of years ago and didn't get all the references and milieu of the writers time. Perhaps, I will try the novel again and not be so perplexed. I just have to remember important facts. The novel has a lot of screwing, barfing, child birth, cudgeling, affectionate ribbing, playful killing and drowning of whole villages with copious amounts of urine. Why? Because Rabellais was trying to attack the serious culture of medieval Europe with its oppressive hierarchies of the church and kings and feudal lords. And the only time and way to do this eviscerating of such banal seriousness was during the period of carnival and, in the arts, with carnival images. Otherwise, attacking seriousness with seriousness may lead to a hot fire around a human sized stake in the village square and lead you to howling, quite seriously, as your flesh melts from your bones, forming a tasty bubbling broth for the rats to swill at the conclusion of your very own inferno.

For writers, just soak up the imagery. Let it percolate in your own bowels and watch it ooze onto the page at the most opportune, but albeit unintended moment. Or use it with the full intention of stealing the ideas and imagery and interpolating it into your own story or novel. In other words, here is a literary critic who speaks to writers. If only more literary critics did the same. Usually, the best literary critics, in my mind, are already writers. Nabokov's critiques of Kafka, Dickens, Tolstoy, Gogol are some of the best lit. crit. I have ever read.

I highly recommend this book. Read it and feel your own bowels rejoice at the freedom of carnivalesque imagery, sentiment and enthusiasm for the lower bodily stratums ability to digest, defecate, pee and procreate. EnjoY!

[Timár_Krisztina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sokan és sokat írtak arról, hogyan működik és hat ránk a gyász, a tragikum, a borzalom, a rettegés. Ennél sokkal-sokkal nehezebb igazán jó könyvet írni a nevetésről. Arról, amelyik az ember zsigereiből indul, gurulva jön fölfele, teljes erőből megrázza az egész belsőnket, a szomszéd utcáig elhallatszik, és olyan friss és olyan jó, hogy az elmondhatatlan. Hát itt most elmondják, ötszáz oldalban, hogy milyen jó, mitől jó, miért van szüksége rá a világnak, miért nem szabad alábecsülni, sőt: miért kell ugyanolyan komolyan venni, mint magát a komolyságot.
Hogy az én számomra mit jelentett tizenkilenc évesen, és mit ma? Szellem és anyag összebékülésének lehetőségét. Annak a tudatát, hogy van lehetőség elvont értékeket, intellektust beépíteni a hétköznapi világba, és a kettő nem kell, hogy érvénytelenítse egymást.

Részletes értékelés a blogon:
https://gyujtogeto-alkoto.blog.hu/202...

[mao · Rating 4 out of 5]

A philosophy of laughter, public space, the carnival, the banquet, the grotesque body, and other bodily and material baseness in the middle ages, the Renaissance and in the work of Rabelais. Interesting ideas on the flattening of hierarchical, vertical space, and the shift towards historical time in the body of the grotesque people. Grotesque men as the microcosmos. An anthropological-anatomic history of the universe. A becoming-body, or the body in a process of infinite metamorphosis. The body as the center of all things and engine of life and death. Truths as relative. Immortality in death. In a few words, the humanism of Rabelais. An infinite process of negation of the old and affirmation of the new, of birth and death, of hell's comedy, of praises and insults. A carnavalesque accompaniment, if you will, to the work of Alycofybas himself.

[David Kharaishvili · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the best example of literary criticism I have ever read.

[RKanimalkingdom · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
Rtc

[Abolin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Call it the history of laughter.

why is carnival culture and the humorous side of folk-culture so little documented in historical books?

The fact that humor and carnival culture of the lowest people beholds a ancient reappearing wisdom - that it is something revolutionary that questions established ideas in society and religion by seeing things

eternally unfinished and ambiguous.

i love the thoughts in this book.

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of this was over my head, but I did learn some in regard to Carnival and festivals. The last chapter in particular regarding the French-Italian wars was quite enlightening. Now to read Rabelais itself. I believe that this will have benefited me.

[Eran Zelnik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome, though at times too sentimental about the middle ages and renaissance. I love his rendition of the grotesque as a means to embrace ambivalence and fearlessness.

[Álvaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Análisis canónico de la obra rabelesiana. Quizá peca de ciertos prejuicios e infravalora el aporte de Luciano a la obra de Rabelais, pero, en general, sus interpretaciones aguantan el paso del tiempo con solidez.
Lo mejor son las reflexiones sobre el cuerpo y el cosmos, los desmembramientos, etc.

[Salvo Lo Magno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tipo “La notte del giudizio” però con i falli di legno, le feci di cartapesta e tanta voglia di bestemmiare il feudalesimo

[Caroline Hayes · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a graduate class in Carnivalesque Literature.

[Catnaitab · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book about folk humour and the idea of the grotesque. It can be a bit repetitive at times with its points, but it gives a lot of great examples and historical background about the way people lived.

[Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bakhtine replace l'oeuvre de Rabelais dans son contexte historique. Contre tout les anachronismes notamment ceux de Lucien Fevbre (qui ne voit dans l'utilisation du rire chez Rabelais qu'un simple comique et ne voit pas toute la vision du monde complexe et profonde qu'il y a derrière) , il s'attache à démontrer que Rabelais est un héritier du carnaval médiéval (des fêtes basé sur la transgression des limites, l'inversion des rôles), de la langue populaire médiéval (surtout l'argot). Il s'inspire de genres littéraires médiévaux (le Testament du porc).
Rabelais est aussi un homme de son temps ce qu'on voit notamment via les multiples références à des lieux réels et à des événements historiques de la Renaissance (le dernier chapitre est consacré à Rabelais et son temps). Mais au travers de l'historiographie de Rabelais notamment la façon dont il a été interprété par les classiques, les romantiques, on découvre un écrivain qui a toujours gêné. Son côté scatologique mêlé à ses opinions humanistes n'a pas été compris par les classiques qui y ont vu une sorte de sous littérature tout comme plus près de nous certains n'y ont vu qu'une simple parodie littéraire.
En quelques mots, ce livre en appliquant les méthodes marxistes (un marxisme plutôt hétérodoxe il faut avouer) et la linguistique, Bahktine donne naissance à un monument par son propos et par sa méthodologie à un monument d'histoire littéraire.

[matty · Rating 3 out of 5]

bakhtin is absurdly clever and blew my genuine mind. unfortunately i don’t give a shit about rabelais (i came for this book’s conception of the grotesque and carnival; stayed for its elucidation of the higher & lower material bodily stratum- plus its discussion of the cosmos in relation to bodily matter 💪💪💪) sooo long passages abt his sources and life etc. were irrelevant to me personally. also i read it too fast :( absolute banger tho!!!

[Jani · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you want to learn about the culture of the European Middle Ages and especially about humour in its different forms (and how it could be used to analyse Rabelais) this books offers a fascinating reading with hosts of little tidbits of information (including something that can be linked to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, always a plus to me).



However, if one is just interested in the grotesque and the carnival, the introduction offer just about everything the book offers theoretically. The rest doesn't really add to the general idea, but just puts the theory into effect on Rabelais and other works, often in almost same words that had been used in the intro.



So if you're only interested in the part that has made this a classic, you can just stick to the introduction, but if you wanna learn more about the dark age in the european history and what made its toils more sufferable to the folks even momentarily, dive deeper, but remember to keep your critical eye with you.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is dense and intellectually demanding - you are invited to reconstruct nothing less than an extinct paradigm of the world in your imagination - but it is absolutely worth the effort, both in general and also particularly for an enhanced understanding of that singular comic master Rabelais. For a Westerner, it offers jaw-dropping psychological insight into our pre-modern, pre-Enlightenment European ancestors and their understanding of nature and the world. For the reader willing to truly embrace the book and delve in, it is a revelatory experience, and all the more fascinating as there remain vestiges of these belief systems all around us (obviously transmogrified). In our age of mindless political correctness, Rabelais' humor is needed more than ever, and Bakhtin's novel orients us to this lost world as to reveal the depth of its riches. Re-reading is highly recommended, due to the (sometimes) overwhelming amount of concepts and information this book throws at you.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've only read part of this book, but I think all that I needed was in the introduction, everything else is just illustration of the general principles laid out in the intro. So I am moving on to some of the other things I need to read, rather than doing the scholarly thing and finishing Bakhtin now. But I'll come back to it someday.

The theory is really interesting, focusing on the shifting role of laughter and parody from the middle ages to the present. Bakhtin discusses how the role of the carnival and the grotesque body in the middle ages was one of simultaneous mockery and regeneration, then during the Romantic period laughter became brutal and was only viewed as a legitimate satirical tool.