This analysis will explore the progression and transformation of carnivalesque theory in six novels. The carnivalesque analysis will focus on Victorian women and the working class over a time period beginning around 1830 and ending in 1910. The novels that comprise this study are Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native and Jude the Obscure; Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South and Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley; and finally Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale and E. M. Forster’s Howards End. The study intends to show a progression in the role of women that utilizes carnivalesque display as a vehicle. Women in the Hardy novels represent those who rebel against prescriptive Victorian mores in the midst of carnivalesque scenes. Hardy intends to use transgressive women and the suffering they endure to illustrate how Victorian rules of decorum and the institution of marriage are confining to point of being destructive. Gaskell and Bronte’s novels represent industrial or condition-of-England novels that show how Victorian women gain greater access and understanding of the working class and poor through spending time with these groups while performing charitable works. The carnivalesque has indeed undergone a partial transformation because scenes that overturn authority occur not only in public settings like the marketplace, but they also show up in the form of worker strikes and uprisings. Because the females in these novels have a greater understanding of the plight of the poor workers, they are able to advocate on their behalf and exert influence upon the managers and owners that helps to bring about reform in the workers’ situation. Finally the last two novels represent the culmination of this study as they reveal how carnivalesque scenes, both public and private, frame the experiences of two sets of sisters, both of which occupy the liminal space between the Victorian Age and Modernism. Women have progressed to the point of being able to overcome adversity and personal failure and grow into strong, independent individuals who speak for themselves, live independently, exert their own authority, and finally vote.

This paper argues against the charges of puerility in the films of Kevin Smith. I analyze Mallrats (1995), Clerks II (2006) and Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008). To illustrate my contention, I offer close readings of the director's films, particularly the protagonists' bodily/linguistic performances. My efforts will vindicate my assertion that through these specialized performances, through the forceful assertion of their marginal identities, the films' protagonists encroach upon, and finally appropriate, historically dominant spaces. As a result, the spaces they appropriate acquire a new, characteristic hybridity. Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia provides a framework for delineating the dominant and liminal spaces within Smith's cinematic/real worlds. Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of the 'carnivalesque' helps to elucidate the vagaries of the films' bodily and scriptural performances, while both Kevin Hetherington's concept of utopics and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's notion of the rhizome attempt to marry Bakhtin and Foucault. through the notion of appropriation of public space through performance to ultimately achieve a utopian, pluralistic ethos.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger describes humour as a response to human 'thrownness' in the world. This thesis argues that there is a form of humour which can be usefully described as postmodern humour and that postmodern humour reflects the experience of being 'thrown' into postmodernity. Postmodern humour responds to and references the fears, fixations, frameworks and technologies which underpin our postmodern existence. It is further contended that South Park is an example of postmodern humour in the way that it exhibits a carnivalesque postmodern narrative impulse which attacks the meta-narrative style explanations of contemporary events, trends and fashions offered in the popular media. South Park's carnivalesque humour is a complex critique on a society in which television is a primary instrument of communication, a centre-piece to many people's lives, and a barometer of contemporary culture, while at the same time drawing attention to the fact that the medium being satirised is also used to perform the critique. A large portion of this thesis is devoted to examining and interrogating the discursive properties of humour as compared to seriousness, an endeavour which also establishes some interesting links to postmodern philosophical discourse. This can be succinctly summarized by the following: 1. Humour is a form of discourse which simultaneously refers to two frames of reference, or associative contexts. Therefore humour is a bissociative form of discourse. 2. Seriousness is a form of discourse which relies on a singular associative context. 3. The legally and socially instituted rules which govern everyday life use serious discourse as a matter of practical necessity. 4. Ambiguity, transgression and deviancy are problematic to serious discourse (and therefore the official culture in which it circulates), but conventions of humorous discourse. 5. Humorous discourse then, challenges the singularity and totality of the official discourses which govern everyday life. Subsequently, humour has been subjected to a variety of controls, most notably the 'policing the body' documented in the writings of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault. 6. Humour can therefore be understood to function in a manner similar to Jean-Fran ois Lyotard's concept of little-narrative's, which destabilize the totality of official meta-narratives. Furthermore, this thesis proposes strong links between the oppositional practices of the medieval carnival, as outlined by Mikhail Bakhtin, and the produced-for-mass-consumption humour of South Park. However, it also demonstrates that although South Park embodies the oppositional spirit of the carnival, it lacks its fundamentally social nature, and therefore lacks its politically resistant potency. More specifically it is argued that the development and prevalence of technologies such as television, video/DVD, and the internet, allows us to access humour at any time we wish. However, this temporal freedom is contrasted by the spatial constraints inherent in these communication/media technologies. Rather than officially sanctioned times and places for carnivalesque social gatherings, today, individuals have the 'liberty' of free (private) access to carnivalesque media texts, which simultaneously help to restrict the freedom of social contact that the carnival used to afford. Further to this, it is argued that the fact that South Park, with its explicit derision of authority, is allowed to circulate through mainstream media at all, implies asymmetric conservative action on the part of officialdom. In this sense it is argued that postmodern humour such as South Park is allowed to circulate because the act of watching/consuming the programme also acts as a deterrent to actual radical activity.

Yes / Within the still-dominant medical discourse on dementia, disorders of language (such as dysphasia, aphasia, and perseveration) feature prominently among diagnostic criteria. In this view, changes in ability to produce coherent speech or understand the speech of others are considered to be a direct and inevitable result of neuropathology. Whilst an alternative psychosocial account of communicative challenges in dementia exists, emphasis here is placed largely on the need to compensate for deficits in the language or comprehension of the diagnosed individual and on his or her social positioning by ‘healthy others’. Rather less emphasis has been placed to date people with dementia as social actors who create meaning and draw on contextual clues in order to give shape to their interactions. In this article we draw on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of the carnivalesque, heteroglossia, polyphony and dialogism to analyse a series of interactions involving people with dementia in day and residential care environments. Two main findings are foregrounded. The first, consistent with previous studies, is that many of the communicative challenges faced by people with dementia arise from the social environments in which they find themselves. The second is that the utterances of people with dementia in the face of these social challenges show many of the hallmarks of cultural resistance identified by Bakhtin.

Denna uppsats ingår inom det vetenskapliga fältet Fat Studies där målet är att utmana den stigmatisering som överviktiga individer upplever socialt och psykiskt. Syftet med denna uppsats är att studera hur överviktiga karaktärer porträtteras i den amerikanska reality-serien Here Comes Honey Boo Boo samt hur genus och klass representeras i relation till fetma. Mina frågeställningar är följande: 1) På vilket sätt porträtteras de överviktiga karaktärerna i tv-serien Here Comes Honey Boo Boo? samt 2) Hur representeras genus och klass i relation till fetma Here Comes Honey Boo Boo? Mitt metodval ingår inom den kvalitativa innehållsanalysen. Jag har applicerat en textanalytisk metod på mitt studieobjekt där jag kartlagt nyckelscener och huvudteman. Jag har i relation till uppsatsens syfte försökt finna återkommande mönster att bygga min analys på. Den teoretiska begreppsramen består av Stuart Halls (2013) representationsteorier samt Bakthins (1984) begrepp carnivalesque. Sedan vävs begreppet panopticism in med understöd av Betterton (1996) och Kristevas (1982) teoretiseringar för att erhålla en allmän bild om hur kvinnan relateras till sin vikt. För att teoretisera begreppen klass och genus i relation till fetma används begreppsförklaringar tagna från Rothblum och Solovays (2009) antologi The Fat Readers studie. Studien visar flera intressanta resultat i relation till teoretiseringen. Det mest utmärkande resultatet är att serien Here Comes Honey Boo Boo försämrar den rådande bilden som finns av överviktiga individer genom att porträttera dem på ett förlöjligande, humoristiskt och groteskt sätt. Kroppsliga reaktioner och andra djuriska instinkter är ett genomgående inslag i serien och tyder på att Here Comes Honey Boo Boo är en serie vars handling utgår från begreppet carnivalesques grunder. Ett överraskande resultat är det faktum att överviktiga män och kvinnor porträtteras på olika sätt i serien trots att kroppshyddorna är lika stora. Det var svårt att borste från aspekter som klass och genus i relation till fetma, de är närvarande i form av kroppen som klassbeteckning och skillnader i representationer mellan könen.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) was a Pulitzer-prize winning American poet who did not produce much published work in her career. This was partly due to her low confidence, depression, alcoholism, and difficult personal life, but it was also due to her meticulousness as a poet. Colleagues and critics praised her strong description and mastery of technique, but criticized her early work as lacking depth. While appearing simple, her early works present complex themes of dualism and isolation. Using characteristics of the carnivalesque and the grotesque, her poetry explores these concepts and the need to cover them. This study's close analysis of four works ("From the Country to the City, " "Cirque d'Hiver, " "Pink Dog, " and "The Man-Moth") reveals characteristics of the carnivalesque and the grotesque, adding a previously unnoticed depth to her early work.

Blonde hair is a potent and highly visible sign in western culture. Although the popularity and desirability of blonde hair in the West is well documented, since the 1950s, blonde hair has also generated many negative associations and these have contributed to myths around blondeness. In particular, women who dye their hair blonde find themselves in a paradoxical position; they simultaneously evoke desire and derision. This thesis uses the model of feminine masquerade outlined by Joan Riviere (1929) as a locus for discussing the transgressive potential of the knowing use of blondeness as a sign. When women wear blondeness in this way they embrace it as an oblique means to access privilege. This self-reflexivity allows women to enter sites of power that they are otherwise excluded from. Drawing on ideas of the carnivalesque, as described by Mikhail Bakhtin (1968), this thesis also proposes that the carnivalesque is employed by women in order to transgress patriarchal boundaries through an ironic masquerade of the archetypal blonde. These paradoxical meanings of blondeness are evoked in the work of performance artist Vanessa Beecroft. Beecroft stages both the reflexive awareness of today's blonde woman and the way in which she is shaped by socio-cultural forces beyond her control. Through reference to Beecroft's art, this dissertation builds upon the optimism and transgressive potential of Bakhtin's 'carnival' and Riviere's 'feminine masquerade' to re-present the identity/position of blonde women as one of agency and power.

In the years following World War II social activists learned to refine rhetorical techniques for gaining the attention of the new global mass media and developed anti-corporate campaigns to convince some of the world’s largest companies to concede to their demands. Despite these developments, rhetorical critics have tended to overlook anti-corporate campaigns as objects of study in their own right. One can account for the remarkable success of anti-corporate campaigns by understanding how activists have practiced prospective narrative disclosure, a calculated rhetorical wager that, through the public circulation of stories and texts disclosing problematic practices and answerable decision makers, activists can influence the policies and practices of prominent corporations. In support of this thesis, I provide case studies of two anti-corporate campaigns: the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union vs. J. P. Stevens (1976 – 1980) and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers vs. Taco Bell (2001—2005). Each campaign represents a typology of practice within prospective narrative disclosure: martial (instrumental emphasis) and confrontation/alliance (popular, constitutive emphasis) respectively. The former is more likely to spark defensive responses and public backlash, and the latter is more likely to sway entire market sectors and produce lasting changes in the de facto corporate social responsibility standards of global markets.

Research Doctorate - PhD English / This thesis challenges the idea that children’s literature is an inherently colonising act. By applying Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of dialogism and the carnivalesque to the nonsense literature of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, I show that children’s texts can be read as non-colonising. A dialogic reading of Edward Lear’s limericks and Lewis Carroll’s Alice books shows that these texts are non-colonising and emancipatory because they do not promote one worldview or impose a concept of the essentialised child onto the reader. Instead, they challenge the arbitrary boundaries established and maintained by tools such as language and threats of social judgement that support imperial dichotomies of self and other. I also show how the discourse surrounding children’s literature perpetuates a “politics of innocence” concerning a dominant social concept of the child. This discourse encourages purposive adaptations of children’s books, in this case, Lear’s and Carroll’s nonsense texts, that are more colonising than the original texts.

This paper intends to study carnivalesque elements in the music and sound design of the Batman: Arkham video game franchise. This will be done by examining the ontology of the Batman mythos through the lens of carnivalesque social theory related to the European-American carnival as articulated by Bakhtin and Rabelais.Two expressions of the carnivalesque, the traditional and the Gothic, can be seen and heard in the Arkham video games. These two carnivalesques are essential to understanding both the games themselves and the Batman mythos as a whole. The music and sound design related to selected in-game locales and characters of the Arkham franchise will be studied and linked to the carnivalesque ontology of Batman as an American icon. This study will support the hypothesis that the European-American carnivalesque still plays a literal and figurative role in twenty-first century American society through such icons as Batman.