carnivalesque

Carnivalesque refers to a mode in literature and culture characterized by the suspension or subversion of established order through carnival imagery and practices. The term was coined and developed by Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin in his study Rabelais and His World (1965, English 1968). Bakhtin argues that medieval and early modern carnival created a temporary space where official hierarchies—lord and clerk, priest, scholar—were mocked, inverted, and exposed to democratic laughter. The carnivalesque thus introduces a counterculture to official culture, enabling marginalized voices to speak and social norms to be questioned.

Key features include grotesque realism (emphasis on the body, fertility, food), exaggeration and parody, the mixing of high and low in language and culture, and a temporary dissolution of social boundaries. The style often uses laughter as critique, and it foregrounds the collective, participatory, and polyphonic nature of discourse rather than the authority of a single authorial voice. The carnivalesque also dramatizes the world turned upside down, by which social rules are suspended, bodies are celebrated, and rules of propriety are bent.

Applications across disciplines: In literature, film, and theatre, the carnivalesque is used to analyze works that stage subversion of power, satire of institutions, or democratic reassertion through communal festivity. The concept has influenced studies of modernist and postmodernist texts, as well as popular culture. Some critics argue that the term risks romanticizing carnival or ignoring how power can reproduce itself within carnival spaces, and scholars debate its applicability to non-Western traditions.