In this book by the eminent Russian philologist and thinker M. M. Bakhtin, François Rabelais's novel Gargantua and Pantagruel serves as the starting point for the author's reflections on the nature of the comic and its embodiments in various genres and styles of speech, as well as on the forms and functions of corporeality characteristic of the folk culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The author develops a theory of grassroots humorous culture, which in these eras stood in opposition to 'serious' official culture, was imbued with a carnivalesque 'pathos of change and renewal,' 'awareness of the cheerful relativity of prevailing truths and authorities,' and reflected the popular belief in the constant renewal of life, allowing people to feel a sense of belonging to the universe (the concept of the 'grotesque collective body'). Completed in 1940 and published a quarter of a century later, in 1965, Bakhtin's monograph defined the development of global literary scholarship for decades to come. Its publication in this edition is supplemented by an article, 'Rabelais and Gogol,' which was not included in the main text of the study and sheds additional light on its key ideas.

Author: Mikhail Bakhtin