page_title: Grotesque body
section_title: Carnival
hierarchical_section_title: Grotesque body / Carnival
caption_attribution_description: New Orleans: 1875 engraving "The joyous, grotesque maskers appear upon the ball-room floor." Mardi Gras masque ball. Per [1], this is identified as the 1873 Comus ball at the Varieties Theater.
context_page_description: The grotesque body is a concept, or literary trope, put forward by Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin in his study of François Rabelais' work. The essential principle of grotesque realism is degradation, the lowering of all that is abstract, spiritual, noble, and ideal to the material level. Through the use of the grotesque body in his novels, Rabelais related political conflicts to human anatomy. In this way, Rabelais used the concept as "a figure of unruly biological and social exchange".
  It is by means of this information that Bakhtin pinpoints two important subtexts: the first is carnival, and the second is grotesque realism. Thus, in Rabelais and His World Bakhtin studies the interaction between the social and the literary, as well as the meaning of the body.
context_section_description: The Carnival is known as the feast of fools. In America, this is better known as Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras is a religious celebration where people consume copious amounts of food and wine and have a large party to celebrate. The grotesqueness in the carnival is seen as the abundance and large amount of food consumed by the body. There is much emphasis put on the mouth  (where the body can be entered). Eating, drinking, burping from excess, etc. is all done through the mouth. Rabelais uses the Carnival to refer to politics and critique the world based on human anatomy.
  In the Italian celebration of Carnival, masks play a major role as many people wear them during the celebration. Many of these masks can be seen as an exaggeration of the grotesque as they feature enlarged facial elements such as an enlarged nose (which is a part of the grotesque body). The Italian celebration of carnival is similar to that of Mardi Gras where food and alcohol are consumed in excess.
  Both renditions of Carnival are celebrated immediately before the Christian season of Lent which is about a 40-day season for people of Christian (primarily Catholic) faith to cleanse themselves and become pure before Easter Sunday.
caption: Grotesque masks are shown here, worn by many at a carnival.
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