| In this thesis, I analyze the use of the carnivalesque tradition in a small web-journal called The New Pantagruel (TNP), which published between 2004-2006. The TNP editors and contributors deployed the carnivalesque tradition to criticize excessive individualism in American culture in general and, with particular fervor, several generations of American evangelicals. Within my descriptions of their arguments, I argue that the carnivalesque tradition grounded the cultural criticism in TNP in artistic and compelling ways, despite the seemingly strange combination of the nature of their critique, their deployment of the carnivalesque tradition, and the digital environment in which they published. I argue further that this strange combination of features reveals TNP to be a culturally significant artifact that both confirms and complicates traditions in American cultural criticism, especially as these traditions develop in a digital environment. |
