論文

Hermeneutics of Carnival and Culture

Satoshi Tsukamoto

要旨

こ の論文で， 著者は文化 と い う 概念が中世の イ ギ リ ス で行われて い た
カ ー ニバルか ら 派生 し た と い う こ と を ， 文献 を も と に 検証す る 。 中世
カ ーニバル に お い ては， 聖な る も の と 俗な る も の と が渾然一体 と な り ，
地位の高い人が地位の低い人に な り す ま し た り ， ま たその逆の こ と が起
こ っ た り し た。 ま た身体は海や地 と つ な が っ て い る 存在 と し て認識 されて い た。 し か し 時代が進む に つれて カ ーニバル を， 風俗を乱す催 し 物と し てみなす風潮が広 ま り ， それ と 相 ま っ て衛生観念が確立 さ れ， カ ー
ニバルは性病の巣窟 と し て当局か ら 取 り 締 ま り を受け る よ う に な っ た。
ま た上流階級の人が カ ーニバル に参加 し な く な り ， それ と ほぼ同 じ 時期に ロ ン ド ン で劇場が作 ら れ， 見せ物は劇場で楽 し む よ う に な っ た。 そのよ う な歴史的推移の中で， 文化 と い う 概念が作 り 出 さ れた と 著者は主張する。

Keywords: culture , carnival, body, theater, hierarchy
キ ー ワ ー ド ： 文化， カ ー ニバル， 身体， 劇場， 階層制度

The word culture serves as a worthwhile expression to describe the distinctiveness of
one civilization from another. Moreover, we are apt to use the word culture whenever wewant to refer to the particularity of one community, of one society, or of one nation. Of― 69 ―

愛知大学 言語 と 文化 No. 7

course, what we regard as culture may have ambiguous boundaries of defining what culture
represents; but at the same time, the term refers to some sort of characteristics in order todistinguish one culture from another. The connotation of the word culture implies both
centripetal force that puts different kinds of factors together and centrifugal force that
excludes deviants from mainstream components that are comprised of its core values. In
particular, this paper will present how these two contradictory forces had come to exist andin fact shaped the framework of culture.
A good place to start is with contemporary American culture that may well represent
the considerable multiplicity of what culture means. For example, it is very difficult toappraise the constituents of current American culture because of its diversity andamorphous forms of its entity. Judging from a perspective of a person who has not become
assimilated to American culture as yet, Disneyland is what reflects on my mind first as therepresentation of contemporary American culture. Once again, what comprises American
culture, of course, is debatable; but what I would like to indicate is that Disneyland is aworthwhile subject to examine when we consider how ordinary people, as participants offestive space, perceive one example of a popular culture in a contemporary sense, which
may indeed suggest where culture came from.
Curiously, Disneyland is a complex manifestation of fantasy and dream world inwhich many people, young and old, aspire to live and to escape to from time to time.
Surely, one feels, it represents material wealth that leads us to the satisfaction of our lives.
Its implications are, therefore, of special interest. Weinstein maintains that “Disney initially
had in mind for this new park: an extremely sentimental and nostalgic place where children
can experience the material culture of past generations and where adults can relive their ortheir parents’ childhood.”1 There can be little doubt that the abundance of character goods
and the excitement of amusement facilities convince us of another world that satisfies ourdesires that may not be contended in a day-to-day life. Understandably, the fundamental
and foremost idea of the Disneyland is “the essence of America—a place of warmth andillusion, with nostalgia of the past, complexities of the present, and glimpses of the future.”2
The Disneyland is an offspring of the carnival seen in the Middle Ages in the sensethat visitors feel liberated from burdens of their earthly lives and are allowed to participate
in the festive world. At its best, the festivity that prevails there leads the visitors to either
the past or the future of America, while the very same atmosphere of the Disneyland makes
it possible for them to transcend the barrier between the past and the future, nostalgia and― 70 ―

Hermeneutics of Carnival and Culture

ambition. The visitors’ minds, free from worrying about one’s daily work, can easilytransfer to another world and enjoy a somewhat temporal illusion and fantasy. There are noboundaries to limit our imagination once we enter the Disneyland, and we cross the bordersthat restrain freedom of choosing who we become, where we go, and when we live when
we participate in the world that the Disneyland envisions.
As one might expect, there are parades around Main Street in Disneyland.3 Many
young handsome men and beautiful women with gorgeous costume parade as if they had
been from the world of fantasy, smiling and waving their hands to spectators. The setting
was a Medieval Castle surrounded by woods, and the spectators were made to feel as if they
had been in another world that was difficult to identify with a particular time and space. The
performers seemed to persuade the spectators that they could be one of those princes andprincesses, regardless of occupation, social status, or incomes or any other things to which
one referred in defining one’s identity. There were no boundaries to distinguish theperformers from the spectators in the sense that the performers beneath the splendid
costumes were ordinary people, who happened to be full-time or part-time employees of theDisneyland and belonged to the same earthly world as the spectators did. As a result, thespectators might have felt comfortable to see the parades because they might think that theperformers are equal, not superior in any sense, to themselves, but still they might haveenvied young men and women who played the roles of princes and princesses. Despite its
astonishing qualities, Disneyland is a democratic world that allows people to feel that they
are an integral part of the festivity.
In short, the attractiveness of the Disneyland lies in the forces to transgress theboundaries between fantasy and earthliness and to overcome the limitations of one’s
imagination. In addition, the Disneyland has the power to transcend the commercial
limitations of fairs, exhibitions, and festivals, and carnivals.4 The Disneyland is open
around the year, not subjecting itself to any calendar but its own schedule that is designed tomaximize its sale. The innovation of the Disneyland is “the creation of an actual place in itsvery creation of placelessness.”5 Disneyland is a recreation of imaginary world with theframeworks of the actual places. Especially, the blends of authenticity and falsity fascinate
the psyche of the populace.
In this respect, carnival in the Middle Ages is a prototype of the Disneyland
embodiment in some ways. Both of them temporarily suspend the earthly status of people
defined by the world where they actually reside and destined to share the same norms that― 71 ―

愛知大学 言語 と 文化 No. 7

lead them to another world. In addition, both transgress the boundaries that set one fromthe other; both have the power to transcend the limits of constricting communication amongpeople. Taking this into account, from the Disneyland image we now turn to the carnival.
Carnival in the Middle Ages constitutes the birthplace of what we now consider
culture. Carnival, according to Bakhtin, is a very complex form of festivity that gives
participants a sense of a unified world that permeates all levels of actions and gestures.6
Within the confinement of place and time, all participants manage to share the norm of thecarnival and communicate with each other in the same language into which all gesticulationand verbal expressions are translated. In other words, the participants in the carnival live
together under the same laws. Confronted with this, the law only governs the structure of
the carnival; it restricts and prohibits certain behaviors and conducts in the carnival. One
important characteristic of the law is that it suspends honor, horror, punishment, and codeof conducts and behaviors, all of which come from an established hierarchical structure. As
opposed to a hierarchical society, people are free from the boundary to classify their rank
and somewhat feel free to communicate with each other without worrying about exhibiting
rudeness or offensiveness to the people in the higher rank. True emotion and feeling are
revealed, and the psychological distance among people dramatically narrows. In thiscontext, a new kind of interrelationship emerges and new authority replaces the authority ofhierarchical society in the carnival. This new authority valorizes a certain eccentricity thatallows people to expose deviant behaviors and to express inner hearts. This means that all
forms of gesture and verbal expressions as a rule can be interchangeable; there is no
physical and linguistic restriction in contacting other people. In the long run, all of thethings that have the opposite meanings intermingle: holiness and blasphemy, life and death,wisdom and stupidity, cleanness and dirt, fertility and sterility.
In the carnival all participants enjoy a grotesque body. Bakhtin explains what thegrotesque body is:
The grotesque body … is a body of becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it iscontinually built, created, and builds and creates another body. Moreover, the bodyswallows the world and is itself swallowed by the world…. This is why the essential role
belongs to those parts of the grotesque body in which it outgrows its own self, transgressing
its own body, in which it conceives a new, second body: the bowls and the phallus. 7

Not only gestures and words but also bodies are interchangeable in the carnival. More

― 72 ―

Hermeneutics of Carnival and Culture

importantly, the grotesque body is a body of growing and of expanding its boundary within
the confinement of the hierarchical society. Somewhat disquieting, the grotesque body is
not distinguishable one from another; it is a collective body to hold the world of thecarnival.
We are reminded that the grotesque body communicates not only with each other but
also with the earth and the sea of which the human is a part. At the same time, thegrotesque body deliberately communicates with soil and water through the lower strata of
the body such as urine and excrement, and this is the most fundamental and significant
communication to be human. Bakhtin stresses:
We must …stress that it was in the material acts and elimination of the body—eating,drinking, defection, sexual life—that man found retraced within himself the earth, sea, air,fire, and all the cosmic matter and its manifestations, and was thus able to assimilate them.
Indeed, the images of the material bodily lower stratum have a prevailingly cosmic
connotation. 8

In sum, the grotesque body is a way of communicating with the cosmic world surrounding
the human and of interacting with resources of life to revitalize itself.
Remarkable as it is, the grotesque body that Bakhtin mentioned reminds me of areligious festival in which I had participated several times in Japan. The name of thefestival is a Naked Festival, held in Inazawa, Aichi prefecture. On January the thirteenth ofthe lunar calendar, many groups of men who are naked save for their loincloths made of
bleached cotton jog in a zigzag line on the road, holding a bamboo tree with branches
fastened pieces of cotton cloth in which many wishes are written down, and drinking ricewine. Their destination is the Owari Oukunitama Shinto shrine sacred to a deity, whose
history goes back to the eighth century. These individuals carry a heavy bamboo tree withgallant, “Wa-shoi!” On the way to the shrine, they drink rice wine to make their body warm
because it is usually very cold outside. They also offer rice wine to spectators along theroads. After offering the bamboo trees to the shrine, hundreds of naked men look forward
to the appearance of the man of god in the front yard of the shrine. The man of god isdecided by lot among a few young men who want to hold the honorable position each year.
In any given instance, the lucky man who is chosen stays in the shrine for three nights andpurifies his body and soul by just eating rice, drinking water, and praying. In addition, allhair of the body including pubic hair is shaved.

― 73 ―

愛知大学 言語 と 文化 No. 7

On the day of the festival, the man of god plays the crucial role because he is the
person whom hundreds of naked men try to touch in order to get rid of any future
misfortune. People believe that the man of god takes care of the misfortunes of the people
in the following year. Once the man of god appeared, hundreds of naked men elbow their
way through crowds to touch the man of god. Nobody knows exactly when and where theman of god shows up in the yard, but it is usually around 4 o’clock in the evening. Sincemany of the naked man are intoxicated, they are very excited in the crowds. Dozens ofstrong naked men protect the man of god from massive half-crazy crowds, and a dozen ofothers water the cold water over the crowds. Usually the temperature on the day of thefestival is around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so it is very freezing when the water is sprinkledfrom wooden buckets. Yet, to one’s surprise, the water soon evaporates because of the heat
the huge crowds generate. Since all of the naked men desperately try to touch the living
god, the crowds appear to be in a trance. Some fall down with dirt; others jump over thecrowds from a fence. Many bodies intermingle into one grotesque body covered with sweat
and dirt.
When I was pushed back and forth in the crowds, I felt that my body was a part of thebigger body, and I could not help following the movement of this enormous body. Howevercompelling its rhythms, I felt as if this collective body had had enormous power to control
my body and soul. At the center of the crowds is the living god who lies down and almost
loses his consciousness with many scars on his body. He is a center of the collective body;his body is a symbol of the grotesque body. It is said that you are the luckiest man if you
touch the phallus of the living god. I have touched the man of god four times out of six
attempts; furthermore, to my great joy, I touched his phallus once.
On the day of the Naked Festival, the world is upside down temporarily. That is, it iscommon to see the men who are naked save for loincloth made of bleached cotton withrubber soled white shoes and a colored cotton headband on the street. They offer rice wine
and a piece of the cotton headband to spectators along the street while they head for theshrine. It means that persons who drink rice wine or obtain a piece of the cotton headband
will have good fortune. At the crossroads, the naked men erect the bamboo tree. If thisoccurs at a junction of the road that allows cars to run on the day of the festival, cars have tostop and wait until a group of the naked men passed by. At this stage, another law prevails.
The naked men can feel that they dominate the road, not the cars. It is humorous to see
naked men force the policemen who control traffic to drink rice wine. Some policemen― 74 ―

Hermeneutics of Carnival and Culture

accept; others refuse. On the way to the shrine, there is the police station, and every year
groups of naked men who pass by the police try to enter the building, intending to disturb
the order. Their attempts always fail because of the policemen who guard themselves
against the naked men. At such a time, it is interesting to observe the confrontations
between order and disorder represented by the tussle between the police and groups of
naked men.
I would add in haste that the grotesque body does not cease to exist; on the contrary,
the grotesque body is alive in the place where religious power is strong enough to confine
the diffusion of the grotesque body. It is considered that Japan is considered to be a secularsociety. Yet Japan preserves the tradition in many rural areas of the country in its original
design, and unlike Britain or France that executed a king or disembodied a divine body,
Japan has conserved the spiritual embodiment of a direct descendant from heaven for
thousands of years: the Japanese Emperor.
To put it another way, religious beliefs and activities are so interwoven with otherdimensions of ordinary life that it is almost impossible to separate solely one particular idea
or practice and to name it religion. It is not until I stayed in the United States for a whileand observed what was going on in Japan that I noticed that I had some sort of religious
beliefs. I used to go to the Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples near my house to pray for
the well being of my family and myself whenever I felt the need. Or I used to pray in frontof the Shintoism and Buddhist altars in my house whenever I thought it was the time to do
this. My grandfather used to worship three times a day, sitting before the altars of the
Shinto and Buddhism in my house. It was so natural and so unconstrained that I thought it
was not a religion. Rather I thought that it was a part of my life; praying for my family was
the way of my life to keep me alive, like eating or breathing. In such a society, nobody
questions the meanings of prayer by joining one’s hands. It is because the religious poweris so pervasive and so strong in an unconscious way; the grotesque body is preserved intact
within the confines of the religious sphere.
In the Middle Ages, religious power was very strong and permeated every corner ofdaily life; one’s personal identity was inextricably tied to the entire society. So it isunderstandable that the identity of the participants in the carnival was virtually ambiguous.
There were no reference points with which they identified themselves in the carnival; theself-perception of the body to space was equivocal. Chiefly, there was no distinction
between those who recognized others and the bodies that were recognized by others. For― 75 ―

愛知大学 言語 と 文化 No. 7

instance, the dissection of corpses in the public place attracted people in France during the
lifetime of Rabelais.9 This public dismemberment proved that people at that time regarded
other bodies as something familiar and belonging to themselves rather than as somethingforeign and disgusting. The corpses, like beef or pork, were destined to contribute to theliving people rather than to discard; one witness said that the corpses were fortunate
because they did not become a prey of the birds. That is to say, no concept of otherness isin the minds of people who joined the carnival, because “carnival is not a spectacle seen by
the people; they live in it….”10 It was not necessary for the people to define and distinguish
who they were because it was the carnival itself that upheld the collective identity.
The carnival is indispensable for people in order to liberate their spirits that become
oppressed and numbed by day-to-day work and society that decidedly confines their lives. It
is necessary for them to eliminate their boredom, tiredness, and gloom by participating in
the carnival, thus by refreshing their souls. By the same token, within the confinement oftime and space, the ambiguity of boundary to enforce power allows the participants toreveal the hidden feelings of various kinds of oppression and suppression and to heal thesefeelings by virtually being a part of the chaos in the carnival. Ultimately, the carnival is asafety valve which serves to relax the strands of one’s mind that are otherwise strained
throughout the year.
There are three basic principles that govern the structure of the carnival. The first is
the element of demonization by which a marginalized group is degraded so as to restore
specifically the core values that mainstreamers hold. In the case of the carnival, a pig isoften used in the process of demonization. This is what Stallybrass and White have to sayon the matter: “ …the pig became a focus of what we call displaced abjection, the process
where ‘low’ social groups turn their figurative and actual power, not against those inauthority, but against those who are even ‘lower.’”11 The second principle is inversion
whereby the existing relationships within hierarchy are turned upside down in order tomobilize stiff notions. Stallybrass and White remarked that “inversion addresses the social
classification of values, distinctions and judgments which underpin practical reason andsystematically inverts the relations of subject and object, agent and instrument….”12 During
the carnival, it is often the case that a fool as a result accedes to the throne and a kingbecomes a layman.

Hybridization is the third principle, which generates the new

combination of relationships between the dichotomy of high and low, of sacred and profane,of clean and dirty, of wise and foolish, and of fertile and sterile. While the first two― 76 ―

Hermeneutics of Carnival and Culture

principles, demonization and inversion, do not basically change the binary poles that
support the value system of the carnival, hybridization alters the underlying structure of thebinary value system and revitalizes the system itself. Stallybrass and White explained thathybridization “generates the possibility of shifting the very terms of the system itself, byerasing and interrogating the relationships which constitute it.”13

In summary,demonization is a kind of exclusive force to ostracize a marginal object; and inversion is akind of two opposite forces to fluctuate between the dichotomy of the two extremes, while
hybridization represents discursive forces that ultimately change the fabrication of thecarnival so as to give things new meaning.
Costumes, symbols, and masks play a relatively central role in the experience of thecarnival. A perceptible use of these devices changes the relationships between those who
disguise and those who recognize, or disrupts the relationships, or even reconstructs thecompletely new relationships. “The grotesque inappropriateness of Carnival masquerade,”
Bristol remarked, “reveals the arbitrariness and impermanence in the relationship between
the biological individual and his claims and pretensions to a fixed social status andidentity.”14 The participants in the carnival not only make it well-known that their identity
is equivocal, but oddly enough, also create the new relationships between themselves and aperson or an object that they involve, by which they manipulate the unwritten codes ofcostumes, symbols, and masks.
Burke more specifically describes how people disguised their identities and played theroles of others:
People wore masks, some with long noses, or entire fancy dress. Men dressed as women,
women as men; other popular costumes were those of clerics, devils, fools, wild men andwild animals, for example bears…. An Englishman in Paris for the Carnival of 1786 wrotethat ‘popes, cardinals, monks, devils, courtiers, harlequins and lawyers all mingled in one
promiscuous crowd.’ This crowd did not just dress up but acted out their parts. ‘One plays
the Doctor of Law, and goes up and down the streets with his book in his hand disputing
with every man he meets.’ Fools and wild men rushed about striking at the bystanders withpig’s bladders and even stick. People threw flour at one another, or sugar-plums, or apples,or oranges, or stones, or eggs….”15

What the passage makes clear at once is that people, as a rule, metamorphose into the
opposite sex, from lower beings to higher ones, and vice versa in the carnival. They create
virtual identities with disguise, and consequently, this turns the world upside down.

― 77 ―

愛知大学 言語 と 文化 No. 7

Furthermore, some of them challenge their own relationship to others in a considerably
harsh way.
It may be worth pointing out that we can still at times see inversion and hybridization
in a theater. Radical transformation of the body takes place in the art form of dance,
especially Butoh (Japanese underground and avant-garde dance). The Butoh dance was aradical movement of restoring the grotesqueness of the human body in 1960’s, led by
Tatsumi Hijikata, who danced impromptu to reveal the suggestive and hidden impulses inthe body. Among eminent Butoh dancers and groups are Kazuo Ohno, Sankai-juku, andByakkosha. Sankai-juku, which is composed of five men, had performed several times in
the United States. Apparently, they were acclaimed as one of the best contemporary
dancers who provoke imagination. On the day before their performance, they usually
performed a ritual in public. The shaven-head man of a naked save for a loincloth made ofa cotton bleach with powder on his body from his head to the tiptoe is turned upside down
and is suspended with a rope from the top of the building. On this occasion, they wish theirperformance were successful. It cannot be overstated that their dance is very weird; theirbody movements are similar to those of the reptiles. Yet at the same time contours of theirbodies draw sharp but sophisticated lines on the stage.
Another Butoh dancer, Kazuo Ohno, is a legend, not only acclaimed in Japan but also
extolled abroad. He used to be a physical education teacher at a junior high school before
he became a dancer. At the age of about forty-five, it is said that he recognized that ademon had lived in his body and it had driven him to dance, so he suddenly quit his job andbecame a dancer. In 1984, there was a revival of the Butoh dance in Tokyo, and I myself
saw this legend on the stage. He had already reached over 75 years of age at that time. He
was an ugly old man with deep lines on his face. Instead, what I saw was an old man
dressed as a young girl on the stage. He powdered his face and put on lipstick and rouge,with a ribbon around his head. He wore a lovely blouse and a pretty skirt, holding beautiful
flowers in his arms. His socks were cute. All his efforts did not stop at this point. To mysurprise, the ugly old man metamorphosed into a pretty young girl, but it was whollyundeniable that the young girl was an old man. At first glance, he intermingled youth andold age, beauty and ugliness, and innocence and wickedness.

As he danced

extemporaneously, it turned out to be obvious that a demon using his body was disguised as
an honest girl; it became a dance of a demon that expressed the innocence of an angel.
Finally, his body transgressed the boundaries of time and sex, and transcended the borders― 78 ―

Hermeneutics of Carnival and Culturethat distinguish between sacredness and profanity. No wonder he deserved the name of alegend proportionally in the world of the avant-garde dance.
In short, I have embarked on this digression because I wished to consider theindispensable body to which the basic principles of the carnival were applicable. Initially,
then, let me returned to my main subject. All this holds good in the Elizabethan era where
there was a stratum that roughly drew a line between gentility and plebes, although both ofthem were ambiguous entities. Wrightson stated that the scholars in the sixteenth century
defined gentility in rather ambiguous terms; one of them “thought that gentlemen could besummed up as ‘those whom their race and blood or at least their vertues do make noble andknowne.’”16 Those who earned a living without doing manual labor were gentlemen, but
Wrightson pointed out that there was a good deal of ambiguity to denote the clear groups as
gentility in terms of occupation and social status below the level of knights.
The plebes, likewise, were rather broad category of the populace. According toBristol, the plebes were the people who, because of their entitled capacity, came to exist as
a result of being excluded from the privileged gentility. They identified themselves withactual manual labor such as farmers, artisans, and merchants, and depended upon an
existing alliance among themselves. Because of the multiplicity involved in its constituents,
the plebes constantly generated dissonance and friction among themselves. In addition,
they usually faced the customary subordination from gentility.17 To sum up, the release of
their grievance and dissatisfaction as a result of the subservience was compensated withdemonization, by which they ostracized more marginalized groups such as Jews, foreigners,
prostitutes, and actors.
Correctly understood, demonization extends its implementing power outside theconfines of the carnival, while inversion and hybridization were restricted inside theboundaries of the carnival.

We have to keep in mind that the early target of thedemonization, for example, was prostitution, although it took a long time to bear fruit on
brothels. Orme substantiates how prostitution and brothels were, initially, approved andthen become frowned upon and denounced.18 Until 1546 brothels were recognized as
licentious institutions in London. People tolerated the existence of immorality because theygenerally reckoned prostitution as a necessary evil. In addition, a great many people
benefited from the brothels. Prostitution generated a lot of money and brought about wealthto those who were involved in the brothels, like bawds keeping them and traders selling
prostitutes luxuries such as jewels and gorgeous dresses. But in so far as this activity is― 79 ―

愛知大学 言語 と 文化 No. 7

concerned, syphilis and the Christian reformers changed people’s attitude toward theprostitution. One of the major fears, a sexually transmitted disease, might have restricted
men’s propensity to commit an immoral act, but it was a secondary force against theprostitution.

The widespread force to execute the brothels was that Christianreformers—Anglicans, Calvinists, Lutherans, and Catholics alike—called for the
improvement of morality in a society. This became clear because punishments against
adultery and fornication, enforced by the Church, had already been severe, but the Christianreformers were altogether anxious to lift up the society as a whole to the point where strict
regulations of prostitution were enforced. Essentially, their intolerance of immorality
reached the peak throughout the Europe; and they attacked any legalized prostitution of thecities. In the present context, Henry VIII decreed that the licensed brothels in London beclosed and whores and bawls leave the brothels immediately.
Similarly, the carnival faced two religious oppositions exemplified by the Christianreformers. Important as it is, the first was theological opposition. “The reformers disliked
many popular customs because they were pagan survivals ….”19 They denounced magicand cult practice. Indeed, what they tried to do was to separate the sacred elements fromprofane elements of the carnival because they could not tolerate people doing things thatemphasized the lower strata of the body. The next opposition was, as has been frequently
pointed out, moral. “Festivals were denounced as occasions of sin, more especiallydrunkenness, gluttony and lechery, and as encouraging servitude to the world, the flesh, andthe Devil—especially the flesh.”20 They blamed boisterous activities such as plays, songs,
and dances in the carnival, claiming that such entertainment fostered lewdness anddebauchery.
General hospitals began to exclude the patients who had venereal diseases in theeighteenth century.21 In the sixteenth century, two royal hospitals treated types of patients
who reminded people of promiscuity and confusion, including sexually transmitted diseases
and mental disorders. Hospitals were gradually intolerant of seemingly contagious diseases
that resulted from indecent or abnormal behaviors or from something unknown to thedoctors, and general hospitals began to refuse patients with diseases that caused disorders ina society. As it is, the intention of the hospitals was to safeguard other patients from being
exposed to malicious diseases. In 1746 the London Lock Hospital was established, where
the patents with venereal diseases and other disorderly symptoms had the priority to betreated. This hospital symbolized the enclosure of the deviants; what the founding of the― 80 ―

Hermeneutics of Carnival and Culture

hospital implied was that people attempted to confine the area in which diseases were
contagious. A memorable feature was that people became intolerant of disorders thatthreatened the security and stability of their life.
The relationship between the hierarchical society and the carnival started to change
when people infringe the boundaries to distinguish the plebes from gentility within thehierarchical society. The forerunners of threatening the boundaries were masterless men
who belonged to nowhere in a society. There were five kinds of masterless men.22 First,
there were the vagabonds and beggars, wandering in search of employment, sometimes
living on the streets. For instance, rapid expansion and economic transformation in London
produced this kind of masterless men. They did not go to church; nor did they belong to
any organization. Very shortly, their presence endangered the social stability. In theirdifferent ways, the second type of masterless men was the mob that lived in an underworldof London and indulged in illegal activities. They preyed on others’ benefits and their
existence was a threat to normal economic activities. The third types were the Protestantsectaries. They were religious refugees and lived just above the level of pauperism. They
simply formed their own communities to support one another and escape from feudalism. A
fourth type consisted of cottagers and squatters who did not have lords to depend upon in
the rural areas. They were exposed to the improvement of agricultural betterment and had
the potential mobility to go to the place where jobs were potentially available. Itinerants
were the final type of masterless men, who traveled around the country for trade or sale.
Since they had a great deal of mobility and only were driven by economic motives, they
possibly could have diffused radical ideas to challenge the hierarchical society. In 1569, thenumber of the masterless men in London was estimated at 30,000; in 1602 the number wasa lot more.
In particular, the masterless men had no faces; they did not have references with which
they identified themselves, as opposed to the plebes who identified themselves with their
specific occupation and the gentility with titles. In the hierarchical society, everyone could
notably situate himself or herself, but the masterless men fairly stood outside this tradition
or convention. They moved from one place to another while occupying the margin ofsociety, transgressing the established boundaries of vertical and horizontal structure of thehierarchy.
This is due chiefly to the fear that the masterless men were not visible; it was becauseof their invisibility that they gradually encroached on the boundaries between the plebes and― 81 ―

愛知大学 言語 と 文化 No. 7

gentility, urban areas and rural areas. The structure of the hierarchical society provided theframework that enabled people to understand the roles they played, and before theiremergence, people could define who they were by referring to others who were visible. Yet
the masterless men, without wearing a particular set of clothes to be visible, broke thesystem of identifying themselves and threatened the fixed notion of who people were andwhere they lived. They were amorphous, easily hiding their identities. Consequently, their
existence itself was firmly a threat to the hierarchy.
Another indication of the disintegration of the hierarchy was the emergence oftheaters. Theaters tend to be a more enclosed and more restricted form of the carnival.
Actors play the roles of someone other than themselves, hiding their true identity andpretending to be someone that was fitted in a particular time and space. This calls to mind
that the actors were akin to the masterless men who “could take on a new appearance;
vagabonds, like the players included in their motley company, could make themselves overagain.”23 The hierarchy gradually lost the power to confine within the carnivals partiallybecause of a threat from a mass of seemingly masterless men. That is, the masterless men
might have felt it necessary to create the actors as an occupation to maintain their lives
without losing their ambiguous identity. “The public playhouses were born,” Mullaneystressed “at a time when traditional hierarchies were breaking down, and neither they nor
the plays they fostered were thus contained by the customary antitheses of rule and misrule,order and disorder, everyday and holiday.”24
Technically and theoretically, theaters were a direct descendant of the carnival, butthey came to restrict the functions of the actors and ranges of expressions the actors
articulated as the authors’ theaters took shape. One example of this trend in the theaters
was the exclusion of clowns from playhouses. When written texts for a play did not exist,
actors were enabled to behave merely like the participants in the carnival; the actors wereallowed to show disruptive improvisation that caused laughter. The champion of the
discordant impromptu was a clown. The crown was the body of becoming; in which casehe was the grotesque body restricted by the space of the theater. The crown “presented afigure his audience could both laugh at and laugh with.”25 Yet because of the advent of the
playwrights in the Elizabethan era who were conscious of the power of the nation, clowns
were destined to be excluded.
The professional clown competes with the authorial voice for attention and control,― 82 ―

Hermeneutics of Carnival and Culture

producing a dialogic text in place of the monological scripted play. The formal unity that
could be achieved only by subordinating subplot to main plot, commoners to aristocrats,
comedy to history, by imposing, that is, the same hierarchies of privilege and power thatexist in the state upon the play, is ruptured by the clown’s refusal to be subordinated to theserious plot. His presence serves to counter the totalizing fantasies of power, to destabilize
the hierarchies upon which they depend. 26

During the 1580’s and 1590’s clowns were the central figures of the players’ theaters,
praising and ridiculing the common people. Yet a famous clown, Will Kemp, departed the
Globe in 1599, which theoretically resulted because of Henry IV’s rejection to Falstaff, who
represented the grotesque body, in Henry IV, Part Two written by Shakespeare in 1597 andthe following year.27
Overall then, Falstaff in Henry IV, Part Two, speaks vulgar language that expressly
belonged to the lower class. He was boisterous and profane. He liked drinking, laughter,and women. This confirms that he was the grotesque body that emphasized the lower
strata of the body. Subsequently, at the end of the play Henry IV expelled Falstaff.
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,That I have turned away my former self.
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I had been,
Approach me, and shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots.
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile. (5. 5. 58–66)

This is a fictional play, but Shakespeare must have been aware of the substantial degree ofpower that the King exercised and of the fact that the King tolerated vulgarity and profanitythat Falstaff symbolized. The King’s words reflected the inner change of himself and his
intolerance of the grotesque body. Moreover, the King’s words implied the emergence ofthe social structure that exerted power that might replace the hierarchy, other than the powerthat the King himself had as the center of the hierarchical society. From Shakespeare’s
point of view, he must have perceived that he in fact needed the power, other than the King,
upon which depended the security of his position as a playwright. While Ben Jonson,
Shakespeare’s contemporary playwright, relied on the King as a reference point to establish
his drama as an art, Shakespeare had other things in his mind to achieve the objective that― 83 ―

愛知大学 言語 と 文化 No. 7

Jonson had. An assumption is that Shakespeare must have known the fragility of theKing’s power.
As the power of maintaining the hierarchical society, which was the power the King
exerted, gradually waned, the noblemen progressively withdrew from participating in thecarnival. Burk stated that between 1500 and 1800 “there was a gradual shift taking placeaway from the more spontaneous and participatory forms of entertainment towards moreformally-oriented and commercialised spectator sports….28 In successive attempts, thenoblemen also started to distinguish themselves from the plebes by using different
language.

“The noblemen,” Burk observed, “learned to speak and write ‘correctly’,

according to formal rules, and to avoid the technical terms and dialect words used bycraftsmen and peasants.”29 In addition, the noblemen differentiated themselves from thelower class by adapting distinct mannerisms. “As their military role declined,” Burk
explained, “the nobility had to find other ways of justifying their privileges: they had toshow they were different from other people. The polished manners of the nobility were
imitated by officials, layers and merchants who wanted to pass for noblemen.”30 They cameto have the notion that they should separate sacredness from profanity, along with theChristian reformers, which resulted in the intolerance of some activities in the carnival andthe distinction between themselves and the plebes.
Without the gentility the carnival was not as vital and entertaining as before, because
without their participation in the carnival three principles of the carnival did not function
well enough to create the dynamic of the carnivalesque world. After the withdrawal of thegentility, what remained in the carnival was profanity, low spirits, blasphemy, stupidity, anddirt. There was hardly a place for demonization or inversion, much less hybridization. By
1800 gentility including the clergy and the merchants had withdrawn from the popularfestivity and left it to the common people without a high breeding and had acquired the very
different ways of looking at things from the commoners.31
The power that disintegrates the hierarchy which confines the carnival and thegrotesque body became stronger as gentility was aware of rationality in the self that set
various kinds of boundaries. Drawing the lines imposed and handling the fragmented
sections divided by the line became steady activities and people gradually separate
themselves from what they used to associate with—other people, animals, the earth, the sea,
and God. The power to dissociate the body with the brain turned out to be even stronger.
This means that people learned to see themselves objectively, not obscurely, separating their― 84 ―

Hermeneutics of Carnival and Culture

minds from their body and banishing the lower strata of the body as dirty as if it were notpart of their body. Curiously, they also became aware of hygiene.32 In fact, the notion ofhealth not only placed importance on the awareness of disease but also emphasized thedisintegration of the grotesque body into a more externalized and peripheral body that
limited the contact with others and the communication with the earth and sea.
Admittedly, the force that was unified for the maintenance of the hierarchical society
became diffused and, in contrast, was applied to frame nationhood or sovereignty thatembraced larger yet much less cohesive entities. It appears that the vital force which once
worked for the grotesque body that enabled it to interconnect with each other moved
inward, as thereby becoming each person’s self rather than the outward ability tocommunicate with each other. The balance of powers was chiefly shaken and disrupted by
the marginalization of prostitutes and the growing intolerance of general hospitals to treat
disorderly diseases. Add to the foregoing the opposition to some practices in the carnival,
the Christian reform movements to make society moral, the appearance of the masterlessmen, the emergence of the theaters that did not need clowns, the declining power of theking, and the withdrawal of gentility from the carnival. All of these prime examples
contributed to a shift of powers. Entropy of the hierarchical society was at work during theperiod that these occurred.
In the final analysis, the admired grotesque body became the pitiable enclosed bodythat refused to communicate with other bodies except through sexual intercourse.
Stallybrass and White stated “…the grotesque was now an unpalatable and interiorized
phobic set of representations associated with avoidance and with others. It could never beowned. It was always someone else who was possessed by the grotesque, never the self.”33
In a society in which the force to impose on the boundaries of the carnivalesque worldceased to exist, one’s body, at best, could never become the grotesque body again. Yet it ispossible to deliberately relax the boundaries of the vividly enclosed body and earnestly
allow it to intermingle with another body simply by changing the balance of powers within
the society. As a habit of mind, the problem is that nobody knows how to do it: themisfortune is that only history is capable of doing it arbitrarily.
It is true that the distance between the exceptional centripetal force that defines the self
and the centrifugal force that delineates the sovereignty of the nation changed over thecourse of the history. What emerged is that people always situate themselves between theseboundaries. Because the precise powers are invisible, people cannot, to a large extent,― 85 ―

愛知大学 言語 と 文化 No. 7

perceive their position exactly, but nevertheless they are conscious of the distance. It comes
as a surprise that the narrower the distance, the more people feel united yet intolerant ofothers. Then people started to widen the distance unconsciously. The wider the distance,
the more people feel sullen and isolated although tolerant of others. Over the course of thehistory, these two characteristic forces oscillate from one extreme to the other. The twoforces that shaped the boundary of what should be included or excluded contributed to thedevelopment of the concept of culture.

Endnotes
01 Raymond M. Weinstein, “Disneyland and Coney Island: Reflections on the Evolution of theModern Amusement Park,” Journal of Popular Culture 26 (1992): 149.
02 Ibid., 150.
03 What I refer to in the following paragraph is based on a visit to the Tokyo Disneyland on
May, 1996
04 Stephen F. Mills, “Disney and the Promotions of Synthetic Worlds,” American Studies
International 28 (1990): 70.
05 Ibid., 71.
06 Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. and ed. Caryl Emerson(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 122–123.
07 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1984), 317.
08 Ibid., 336.
09 Ibid., 360.
10 Ibid., 7.
11 Peter Stanllybrass, and Allon White, Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, New
York: Cornell University Press, 1986), 53.
12 Ibid., 56.
13 Ibid., 58.
14 Michael D. Bristol, “Carnival and the Institutions of Theater in Elizabethan England,” ELH
50 (1983): 642.
15 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York: Harper & Row, 1978),183.
16 Keith Wrighton, “Estates, Degrees and Sorts,” History Today 37 (1987): 20.
17 Michael D. Bristol, Carnival and Theater (New York: Methuen, Inc., 1985), 42–51.
18 Nicholas Orme, “The Reformation & the Red Light,” History Today 37 (1987): 36–41.
19 Burke, 209.
20 Ibid., 212.
21 Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1980), 59.

― 86 ―

Hermeneutics of Carnival and Culture

22 Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (Edinburgh: R.&R. Clerk LTD, 1972)
32–37.
23 Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,
1988), 51.
24 Ibid., 49.
25 Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: the Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1992), 216.
26 David Scott Kastan, “‘Clownes shoulde speake disorderlye’: Mongrel Tragicomedy and theUnitary State,” quoted in Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: the Elizabethan Writing ofEngland (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 226.
27 Helgerson, 223.
28 Burke, 249.
29 Ibid., 271.
30 Ibid., 271–272.
31 Ibid., 270.
32 Dorinda Outram, The Body and the French Revolution: Sex, Class, and Political Culture(New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1989), 47–48.
33 Stanllybrass, and White, 108.

― 87 ―