The Notion Of Mikhail Bakhtin’s Carnivalesque “Epic and Novel”

The Notion of Carnivalesque in Bakhtin’s “Epic and Novel” by Vaishali ‘Epic and Novel’ is an essay authored by Mikhail Bakhtin in 1941 that contrasts the novel to the epic. A literary mode characterized by mocking or satirical challenge to authority and the traditional social hierarchy is referred to as Carnivalesque. This mode was initially originated as 'carnival' in “Mikhail Bakhtin's Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics” which was later established in Rabelais and His World. In the notion of “carnival” Bakhtin traces the origins of the carnivalesque.

Carnival is -“A medieval festival held originally by the sub-deacons of the cathedral, at about the time of the Feast of the Circumcision”. Bakhtinian carnival strives to challenge the monologic position of rankings within a definite framework. Which means that while the carnival can continue playing its customary role of monological system, the other conferee within that context will be able to manifest their marginalized influence. “Carnival happens when marginalized voices come to the scene to degrade the hierarchy that has been trying to keep the monologue running.

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This hierarchy is usually the official voice of the society.”

According to Simon Dentith -“In Bakhtinian thinking and especially in his carnival the central opposition is between the ‘‘classic [official and traditional] and grotesque [realism of the body of society]''. Elaborating this further, the carnival is dismissing of the authorized which means, removing the entity from the distanced plane and the destroying the epic dissociation. The concept of dialogism is crucial to Bakhtinian carnival.

Every voice in Bakhtinian is an autonomous being which is always in interface with other voices for the dialogue creating a scenario where every voice could be heard concurrently , which means that everyone has equal chance to speak himself or herself out. If not so a single voice dominates and the dialogue turns to be a monologue. Bakhtin declares that in a monologic discourse -''a thought is either affirmed or repudiated; otherwise it simply ceases to be a fully valid thought’’.

For instance, James Joyce in ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ introduces Stephen Dedalus, who does not respond to his settings as monologue but as a matter of dialogism. Although he refrains to give in to the ideological, political, and social supremacies around him as the basis for carnival. Stephen erodes these hierarchical obligations and listens to his own marginalized voice rather than following the authoritative ones. By doing so he transforms himself into a Carnivalesque character that is blindly not going to accept the authority’s voice and even dares to disregard the power.

Through his voice of consciousness the protagonist searches for new discourse in his life that shows us the for his life which shows the dynamic and shifting nature of ‘Dialogue’. However Stephen doesn’t set any hierarchical mode of articulating to ignore the monologue. Such communions fabricate a Carnivalesque narrative discourse where the hierarchies lose their imperativeness for Stephen while he keeps searching for new directions for his life. However, he neither does follow the religious authority, nor his country’s nationalisms he applies his own unfinalized approach that could symbolically stand for his marginalized voice within the Bakhtinian dialogue.