Rabelais and His World

Bakhtin was obsessed with language. He felt that communication is at the center of all art. Form, within the context of a novel, is used by an author to send a message to the reader. He believed that a dialogue was taking place when one reads a novel. Sine this dialogue cannot occur without a speaker (the writer) who is human, than it is safe to conclude that each word in a novel has a social agenda that is charged by the author's own ideology. Essentially, all novels in Bakhtin's eyes were socially charged.


In addition Bakhtin was very concerned with folk culture. He felt that folk culture always includes a carnival as a major component. He feels that carnivals are remarkable for their multiplicity of styles that, like words do for language, morph together to form one cognitive experience. It was that variety that lead to the fun in life, and in language.