m of care – dec 26 24
rabelais and his world by mikhail bakhtin reading group – session 3
[https://museum.care/events/reading-group-mikhail-bakhtin-s-book-rabelais-session-3/]:
This is our long-awaited reading group on David Graeber’s favorite Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World.
We will discuss chapter One: Rabelais in the History of Laughter:
on mediaeval humour: pp. 96-103;
on obscenity: pp.109-110;
Rabelais and revolution: p. 119;
on seriousness: pp. 122-124;
on the belly: pp. 126-127;
on the historicity of jokes: pp. 134-136;
Rabelais’s laughter: pp. 140-144.via 508 pg pdf from monoskop (if no google doc this time):
[https://monoskop.org/images/7/70/Bakhtin_Mikhail_Rabelais_and_His_World_1984.pdf]These meetings are limited in number. The group is meeting 12 times during 2024/25, on the last Thursday of each month.
just now realizing it happened (one hour ago) via nika bsky.. so subscribed to email.. but said i was already on list.. oh well.. take it in from video hopefully..
notes/quotes:
We will discuss chapter One: Rabelais in the History of Laughter:
on mediaeval humour pp. 96-103 (120-127):
96/120
The shoots of a new world outlook were sprouting, but they could not grow and flower as long as they were enclosed in the popular gaiety of recreation and banqueting or in the fluid realm of familiar speech. In order to achieve this growth and flowering, laughter had to enter the world of great literature.
97/121
Buffoon societies, such as the “Kingdom of Basoche” and “Carefree Lads”41 are founded in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The culture of laughter begins to break through the narrow walls of festivities and to enter into all spheres of ideological life. Official seriousness and fear could be abandoned even in everyday life.
This process was completed during the Renaissance. Medieval laughter found its highest expression in Rabelais’ novel. It became the form of a new free and critical historical consciousness. And this supreme form of laughter had been prepared in the Middle Ages.
98/122
Using Reich’s terminology, the sixteenth century presented in the first place the “mimic” tradition of antiquity, the antique “biological” and “ethological” image, the dialogue, the symposium, the brief scene, the anecdote and proverb. But all these elements are related to the medieval tradition of laughter and are in tune with it. This is a carnivalized antiquity.
99/123
They uncrowned and renewed the established power and official truth. They celebrated the return of happier times, abundance, and justice for all the people. Thus had the new awareness been initiated and had found its most radical expression in laughter
100/124
At that time the people could be approached only if armed with the nonofficial instrument of laughter; for men, as we have seen, were suspicious of seriousness and were accustomed to relate sincere and free truth to laughter.
101/125
How did this process of laughter’s degradation start? The seventeenth century was marked by the stabilization of the new order of the absolute monarchy.
on obscenity (pp.109-110):
Rabelais and revolution p. 119 (143):
(no notes)
on seriousness (pp. 122-124):
(no notes)
on the belly pp. 126-127 (150-151):
126/150
Man’s bowels “tempt, betray and punish.” The destroying force of the topographic lower stratum is interpreted in ethical and philosophical terms. Victor Hugo’s variations on the belly theme develop further along the lines of moral and philosophical pathos.
Hugo correctly understands the essential relation of Rabelaisian laughter to death and to the struggle between life and death(in their historic aspect). He sees a special connection betweeneating,swallowing, laughter, and death. More than that, he seesthe link between Dante’s hell and Rabelais’ gluttony: “Rabelais has placed in a barrel the world which Dante thrust into hell.” The seven circles of the Inferno are the hoops of the Rabelaisian barrel. If, instead of the image of the barrel, Hugo had chosen the image of the open mouth and the swallowing belly, his metaphor would have been even more accurate. Having correctly pointed out the relation between laughter, death of the old world, hell, and banquet imagery (devouring and swallowing), Hugo falsely interpreted this connection. He tried to lend it, as we have said, a moral-philosophical character. He failed to understand the regenerating and renewing power of the
lower stratum. This failure diminishes the value of his observations.
on the historicity of jokes pp. 134-136 (158-160):
135/159
The well-known historian Jacques Auguste de Thou expressed in his biography the following opinion concerning Rabelais: He wrote a remarkable book in which, with a quasi-Democritean freedom and with an almost clownish biting irony and under imaginary names he recreated as in a theater all the conditions
of human and political existence and exposed them to the laughter of the entire people.
Rabelais’s laughter (pp. 140-144):
143/?
Such is precisely the famous “laughter of Voltaire”; its force is almost entirely deprived of the regenerating and renewing element. All that is positive is placed beyond the sphere of laughter and represents an abstract idea.
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be you. 