The
carnival is a cultural and mass behavioral phenomenon that was a significant part of the
medieval and Renaissance popular cultures. It was (and still is) celebrated before the Great
Lent, or the great fast, that precedes Easter, predominantly in Catholic communities. Folk
etymology explains the meaning of the word by late Latin carne (meat) and
vale (farewell). However, the carnival was celebrated not only before the
Lent season, because there were other feasts of a similar nature.
Some
scholars connect the carnival to Roman Saturnalia. However, a more cogent
explanation would be to say that the feast signified the medieval mans desire to get relief, at
least temporarily, from the rigidity of church life with its rules and depreciation of the
bodily aspects of existence. The spirit of the medieval and Renaissance carnival is reflected in
the works of such greats as Rabelais, Shakespeare, Boccaccio, and Cervantes.
There is no formal boundary in the carnival between the actors and the observers.
Everyone participates in the performance. There are no outsiders, because everybody is involved.
There are no spacial limitations to the carnival, as it is omnipresent. In effect, the whole
life becomes the carnival. There is no escape from it.
The carnival directs
everyones attention to the mythical golden age, when everything was idyllic and harmonious as
opposed to the present age with its toils. The carnival eliminates the boundaries between the
master and the slave, male and female, the decorous and the obscene. Hence the cross-dressing,
the masks, the pranks, the obscene language, etc.
The carnivalesque laughter
is directed at everything and everyone, including the participants. The whole world is
represented as ridiculous and ridiculously relative. This laughter is ambivalent: it is both
frolicsome and satirizing. It negates and it affirms. It buries and it resurrects. The carnival
symbolizes a desire to invalidate the oppositions between the sexes, the social classes, and
even between life and death.
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