Social Reconstruction In Carnivalization A Bakhtinian Reading Of The Tragedy Of Coriolanus

As Shakespeare’s last tragedy,also the least Roman play,The Tragedy of Coriolanus is finished around 1608.It is adapted from an ancient Greek biographer Plutarch’s Lives of the Most Noble Grecians and Romanes.Comparing with the other three Roman plays of Shakespeare,some scholars believe that the play “is not popular around the public” and “its readers are mostly scholars or students”.There are some professional articles study the drama from its politics,females,authorities,traditional values,and so on.Some critics have praised it,yet there is no articles interpreting or discussing the play from Bakhtin’s carnival theory.As a matter of fact,Shakespeare’s creativity does not decline,and his Coriolanus is still valuable in a further study.Take some instances,carnivalization in the play reveals the transition of social values,from individual heroism to the public freedom and equality,which has been consisted in the collision of different political systems;the victory of democracy and the decline of aristocratic oligarchy,which are all worthy of study and thinking in deep.Bakhtin’s carnival theory is a philosophy about carnivalization that can determine the contradictions and eliminate them in a carnival laughter.This elimination working as a function and named social reconstruction in Bakhtinian study,which includes subverting the social hierarchy,changing the national political system,purifying the individual mind,and so on.Carnival theory’s essence is to give a new comprehension of all things that seems absurd and unexpected by organizing them into carnival states and making their artistic truth created.In Introduction,this thesis reviews the development of Bakhtin and his carnival theory.After the theoretical framework,the Introduction also has a literature review,which refers to critics on Shakespeare and his The Tragedy of Coriolanus,through which one can find that this drama has never been studied from carnival theory.Interpreting Coriolanus from Bakhtin’s carnival theory,this thesis analyzes from carnivalization in time and space,characters,and grotesque body images,so it can conclude that the tragedy actually is Shakespeare’s critical thinking on reconstruction in three different aspects: the political system,social hierarchy,and personal redemption.At first,Shakespeare embodies the conflict of the democracy and aristocratic oligarchy into a war between Coriolanus and citizens.He also intensifies this conflict through a carnival banishment that shows the victory of citizens and their democracy.Then,Shakespeare shows the rise of females through Volumnia’s crowning and the hero’s decrowning;he finally also explains how individuals reach personal redemption in a carnival world,which expounds through the grotesque body images of the city and of Coriolanus.In Rome’s chaos and alternation,Coriolanus redeems himself and becomes completed.This paper will elaborate on Bakhtin and his carnival theory in the Introduction explaining that Coriolanus lacks research from this perspective.Then it is also the new point of this thesis.After that,in the following three chapters,this paper discusses how Coriolanus achieves the renewal of the nation,society,and individual through its carnivalization.The first chapter expounds the carnival time and space of this play that are hidden in the background and the plot of banishment,where countless changes and alternations are involved,which the political system,aristocratic oligarchy are also subverted and transformed in this place.Chapter Two discusses the carnival characters in the play.Mother Volumnia and her son Coriolanus both are ambivalent.Volumnia is a mother giving birth to the hero who protects citizens and their lives,yet she is also the indirect murder who kills her only child because of her thirst to authority.The hero Coriolanus provides lives by fighting in wars,yet he’s again an enemy of citizens who vents his revenge on his protected country.Both of them belong to the carnival figures exposing the duality of life and death,good and evil,subverting to the social hierarchies.Chapter Three analyzes the grotesque body image of Rome and Coriolanus as a twisted boy.Through his alternation in political crisis of the country,he is like the scapegoat or a victim of citizens who transforms to be an independent and finished man at the ending.He also redeems himself when he is free from the control of Volumnia,and the burdens of protecting Rome after he died.In short,no matter from the background,plot,characters,or the grotesque body images,Coriolanus is a carnival work,and through its carnivalization,the national system,social hierarchy,and individual thoughts are subverted and developed.It’s also another great creation of Shakespeare.