Carnivalization And Shakespeare’s As You Like It

William Shakespeare constructs a utopian and carnivalized world in As You Like It.Touchstone the clown is a marginal character who does not participate in the main plot of the story,but develops a secondary story and gets married with a girl in the Forest of Arden,which is full of carnivalized connotations.As a watershed of Shakespearean clowns,Touchstone is important to realize the carnivalization of the play.Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin,a famous ideologist in the 20 th century,builds a huge and complex theoretical system of carnival poetics,in which he proposes carnival,carnivalesque and carnivalization.Bakhtin believes that the summation of all diverse festivities and forms in carnival are carnivalesque and the transformation of carnivalesque into literary language is carnivalization,which is the expression of carnival spirit in literature.Many scholars at home and abroad have used Bakhtin’s carnival theory to enrich their study of literary works,however,there are few studies interpreting Shakespeare’s clowns with Bakhtin’s carnival theory.Due to the complexity of carnival theory,many researchers focus on the theory itself,and few studies related to the images of characters.Based on the above phenomena,this thesis makes a new attempt.By applying Bakhtin’s carnival theory,the thesis discusses Touchstone the clown in Shakespeare’s As You Like It from the perspective of three carnivalized features of a clown,namely,the dialogic nature of language,the grotesque image of body and the duality of decrowning and crowning,in order to prove his significance for carnivalization theme of As You Like It and his resistance to the old order.Besides the introduction and the conclusion,this thesis is divided into three chapters.The first chapter starts from the dialogue of language in Bakhtin’s carnivalization theory,questions the view that no discourse exists in drama,and proposes the statement that the clown Touchstone in As You Like It has discourses with three types of characters from different classes.Double-voiced discourse is the basis of dialogic discourse,which refers to the complex situation of two different voices or two different images in one sentence.There are three types of double-voiced discourse:stylization,parody and hidden polemic discourse.Dialogues between Touchstone and two noble ladies,the shepherd Corin,melancholic Jaques and the country girl Audrey show the characteristics of double-voiced discourse.By imitating,satirizing and refracting other people’s words,Touchstone reveals his sober consciousness and carnivalized personality.The second chapter analyzes the topographic characteristics of the theatrical performance stage,the words used by the clown,and the body of the clown according to the grotesque image of Bakhtin’s carnival theory.The characterization of the clown Touchstone and other Shakespearean clowns reflect humanists’ idea of subverting medieval asceticism during the Renaissance and prove the carnivalized color and unique rebellious spirits embodied by clowns.As You Like It is a play used to describe and imitate the real world,which constitutes an ideal world corresponding to the real world in imagination.And this play generates an artistic creation.For the audience,it is an aesthetic enjoyment of finding common aspirations and gaining empathy.The festive scale,atmosphere,and process as a whole embody the carnivalization in a metaphorical sense,and it also confirms the concept that the world is a big stage described in the play.The third chapter starts with the structure of crowning and decrowning in Bakhtin’s carnival theory and points out that Touchstone experiences symbolic crowning and decrowning in the Forest of Arden.On the one hand,Touchstone’s crowning and his rebellious spirit complement each other,which shows Touchstone’s pursuit of equality.On the other hand,Touchstone’s decrowning illustrates that his rebellious movement is carried out under the constraints of authority.He is still the clown who dances in shackles.As a variant of the carnival square,the Forest of Arden carries ceremonies of crowning and decrowning.In this process,the lower class and the authority present a state of renewal and alteration.The mockery and subservience to the authority show Touchstone’s rebellious spirits and his characteristics of carnivalization.To sum up,Touchstone the clown’s carnivalization reflects in his satirical and witty words,grotesque body and duality of crowning and decrowning.With both rebellious and sober spirits,carnivalized clowns advocate for people to view the world from a humorous perspective and pursue equality of people.As a clown of the lower class,Touchstone’s statements for the lower class can be regarded as representative of Shakespeare,expressing Shakespeare’s humanistic thoughts.To this day,the brilliance of human nature shining on Touchstone is still of enlightening significance to the later generations.