The Grotesque by Philip Thomson
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 107 KB
Overview: For Bakhtin-and one finds it difficult to disagree with him-the grotesque is essentially physical, referring always to the body and bodily excesses and celebrating these in an uninhibited, outrageous but essentially joyous fashion. The carnival, that favourite popular arena for the indulging of physical excess, is seen by Bakhtin as the grotesque event par excellence, the place where the common people abandoned themselves to exuberantly obscene excesses of a physical kind. One can see a whole popular tradition of the grotesque here, ranging from the ancient satyr-plays to the commedia dell’arte (cf. Jacques Callot’s marvellously grotesque illustrations of commedia dell’arte characters and scenes), with important links with dramatists as far apart as Aristophanes and the ‘pataphysicist’ Alfred Jarry, creator of the monstrously grotesque Ubu figure. It might be objected that Bakhtin’s view of the grotesque is idiosyncratic and narrow (he develops it principally in connection with Rabelais, to whom it applies very well), but his insistence on the physical nature of the grotesque and on the primitive delight in what is obscene, cruel and even barbaric is quite justified. We would only wish to add that this delight constitutes only one possible aspect of the response to the grotesque.
Genre: Non-Fiction > General
Download Instructions:
http://festyy.com/wNsar3
http://festyy.com/wNsati
