狂欢节【英文】

Carnival
• It’s joyous, anti-authoritarian, riotous, carnal and liberatory celebration, to escape the pressures of life. • Participants may deliberately violate what appear to be standards of sense and decency (which are really methods of social and imaginative control).
Popular Carnivals today – Carnival at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Mardi Gras in New Orleans. USA – Carnival in Venice, Italy
Carnival Venice
Carnival at Rio
• Carnivals can be a means of social control because the carnival exists within a certain space and time. When it ends, then one more willingly follows the rules of society once again.
• Carnival can also bring freedom and a sense of power because people are able to do what they want to do.
• A classic scene of a Renaissance carnival appears in the opening chapters of The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo. Quasimodo, the hunchback, becomes the King of Fools and is paraded like a hero through the streets.
Mardi Gras
Carnival
• Carnival is a time or space in which the normal rules of society don’t apply. • Carnivalesque literature highlights this kind of atmosphere. • Nonsense is one way of rejecting the formal rules of society. This makes it empowering. • The “grotesque” is an aspect of carnival that celebrates the physical body and the lower bodily functions.
Social Constraints Breaking social constraints,
Carnival
Social Constraints
1. What is a “good” child like? Name some of his/her characteristics? 2. How free are children to do whatever they wish? 3. What are some things that children should not do? 4. Who makes the rules that children are supposed to follow?
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The Carnival Tradition
Carnival is a festive season when the normal rules of society don’t apply. It occurs immediately before Lent; usually during February or March. (Lent is a time on the Christian calendar when followers give up eating meat and/or give up something they really like in order to prepare for the passion of Christ.) It typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus and public street party. People often dress up or masquerade during the celebrations.
– – Who decides what is good and bad for a child to do? How do they make these decisions?
Social Constraints
• • • • • Rules from parents Rules at school Religious guidelines Peer pressure Laws of propriety (socially acceptable behavior)
– Fashion – language/behavior – Selfishness/selflessness – Behavior toward opposite sex
Breaking social constraints in literature
• gives a feeling of power when readers identify with characters who break the rules. • challenges the norms and conventions of society by testing them. • provides a site for humor.