Rabelais and His World Paperback – January 9, 2009

Those who come to RABELAIS AND HIS WORLD by Mikhail Bakhtin with little or no knowledge of either the author or his topic are likely to find the first chapter arcane and scholarly but all the following ones engrossing if not gross. It helps to know that Mikhail Bakhtin grew up in post-Czarist Russia, lived through the terrors of Lenin and the worse evils of Stalin. As an academic, Bakhtin well knew of the stifling intellectual and social tyranny of his native Russia. He grew to prize freedom because he had so little of it. Slowly, he developed the thesis that of all the literary genres he could use as a bully pulpit to exhort his fellow countrymen to seek liberty it was only the novel that held any promise. Bakhtin saw the novel in a manner totally unlike any of his contemporaries. For him, a novelist like Dostoevsky or Rabelais could people his novels with characters who could speak their lines not as a mouthpiece for the author (monologic) but as a collective howl of pain of those whose voices might otherwise be stilled (dialogic). In his mind, the novel became synonymous as a tool of literary freedom, and thus dangerous to the Powers That Be. Bakhtin uses Rabelais as the focal point for his thesis that the spirit for freedom of an oppressed people can never be halted only delayed. He notes that Rabelais, who lived in the 16th century, wrote GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL, an extended fiction that permitted and encouraged a carnivalesque atmosphere in which the commoner, the fool, the prostitute, and other dispossessed voices could for one single day shout out their derision at an otherwise dominant power structure. No royalty or government VIP would be safe from vituperation. Bakhtin writes that in the fiction of Rabelais, there is an inordinate excess of bodily excretions, all of which must have been profoundly shocking to the prim and sedate readers of Bakhtin's own day. but not, he notes, to the more liberated readers of Rabelais' day. Bakhtin describes a society of bluenoses just before and after Rabelais' time in which the dominant ruling classes surely took egregious offense at the very notion that an oppressed majority of commoners would dare to upbraid their betters with scatological comments and actions.

RABELAIS AND HIS WORLD is not light reading. The reader soon discovers that Bakhtin assumes an immense erudition on their part. Bakhtin drops names of painters, writers, and assorted intellectuals with what seems crushing frequency. This, however, is no insurmountable obstacle as his basic points are clear enough. For those who manage to digest the complete book and are intrigued enough to learn more of the technical aspects of his worldview, such patient and motivated readers would do well to read Bakhtin's seminal article on the multiplicity of voices in the novel, "Discourse in the Novel." But even if not, just this one book is quite enough to remind us that the quest for freedom is rarely neat and clean. RABELAIS AND HIS WORLD is a powerful if messy wake up call for those who might otherwise forget.

Mikhail Bakhtin first began "Rabelais and His World" in 1917 during the heady days of the Russian Revolution. Like some of the colleges of today, the University of St. Petersburg at the height of the Revolution boasted a flexible curriculum and encouraged free thought among its students. While the gunfire echoed in the streets, Bakhtin and his colleagues gathered to declare the Russian Revolution the "Third Renaissance". This comparison between the Italian Renaissance and the Russian Revolution inspired him to begin his dissertation on Rabelais. The events of the Revolution swept everyone up into the societal transitions. No one could just be a bystander. From this all-encompassing mood of social interaction arose Bakhtin's concept of the "theater without footlights". As for the significance of the individual in the Carnivalesque one has only to look to the Fool. Bakhtin considered his first reading of Friedrich Nietzsche an epiphany. The great German philosopher remained one of Bakhtin's most important influences throughout his writing career. The Fool, as an extension of the carnival, is the ultimate Nietzschean character. Able to move between worlds, he demonstrates the power of the individual to transcend societal norms. Bakhtin states, "the images of folk culture are absolutely fearless and communicate this fearlessness to all". The Fool is representative of this utopian ideal personified in the individual.

This is simply the best analysis of the "Carnivalesque" and is a valuable preface to Rabelais' novel itself. Bakhtin's book alerts the reader of Rabelais to his (Rabelais') masterful use of language and explores the sources of medieval popular culture that served his purposes. I have enjoyed Rabelais with much deeper understanding having first read Bakhtin.
Bakhtin and Rabelais both negotiated cultural minefields to produce their works. Both deserve to be more widely read.

Take your time with this academic book and you will be rewarded. It rediscovers the spirit of the Medieval carnival. The tradition stemmed from ancient Greek and Rome and its function was to give a vent to people's death fear and anger over social injustice. "Everything was allowed" and for a short period of time the social taboos were erased. Fools and prostitutes were "crowned" to embody Kings, Queens, Pope, saints, monks and nunns. And the chosen ones were mocked, ridiculed, assailed and beaten and stoned and "dethrowned" and "impeached."
Is this tradition dead today? Think twice -- think David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and especially Howard Stern, and you will be amazed to find astoundig parallels between the past and modern times.