An Interpretation Of Carnival Traits In Middlesex

Jeffrey Eugenides is an outstanding modern American novelist, who is good at special narrative strategies. He spent nine years in writing Middlesex, which tells the splendid immigration saga of a Greek-American family and the difficult procedure of self-identification from a hermaphrodite’s perspective. This book involved with plenty of subjects, such as culture, history and politics. The inclusiveness and profundity makes it a great work. In 2003, Eugenides won the Pulitzer Prize for the fine work.Bakhtin transfers carnival into literature and comes up with the carnivalized literature with the principal characteristics of the carnival square, crowning and decrowning of carnival ritual, carnival sense of the world and so on. Bakhtin sets up a bridge between the literary works and the real world, which gives the works more profound theoretical and practical value. This thesis tries to excavate the carnival traits involved in Middlesex in light of Bakhtin’s carnival theory and to provide a new angle for the further study of this novel.As crowning and decrowning is the most typical plot for the carnival festivity, this work has its own wonderful interpretation. Eugenides designs special carnival squares for the primary carnival characters—Cal/liope, Zizmo and Father Mike to achieve the rituals. The constant crowning and decrowning let the spirit of carnival disseminate all over the text. As the core of carnival sense of the world, the spirit of carnival, that is, the spirit of subversion, the spirit of the “gay relativity of everything”, the spirit of ambivalence and the spirit of alteration and regeneration leads people’s life subject and direction in this fine work. Middlesex devotes itself to the subversion of the stereotype and the shackle, hoping to create new life from ashes and to grasp “the gay relativity of everything” from the constant renewal and alteration. Besides, the openness and inclusiveness also finds its full expression in the hybrid of genres and the carnivalized language in Middlesex. In a word, Middlesex is a work with carnival quality and the most distinguishing trait is that the carnival features manifested not only in its content but also in its form. An interpretation of carnival traits in Middlesex is conducive to broaden people’s thinking space and spread the spirit of carnival.