Rabelais and his world

This classic work by the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikahil 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 og laughter and irreverence prevailing at carnival time is the dominant quality of Rabelais' art. The work of both Rabelais and Bakhtin springs from an age of revolution, and each reflects a particulary open sense of the literary text. For both, carnival, with its emphasis on the earthy 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.