Social Constraints Breaking
social constraints, Carnival
Jabberwocky
• Lewis Carrol’s nonsense
poem found in Through
the Looking-Glass, and
What Alice Found There
(1871) is generally
considered to be one of
the greatest nonsense
poems written in the
English language.
• The word “jabberwocky”
is also occasionally used
as a synonym of
nonsense.
Jabberwocky
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Social Constraints
1. What is a “good” child like? Name some of his/her
characteristics?
2. How free are children to do whatever they wish?
3. What are some things that children should not do?
4. Who makes the rules that children are supposed to
follow?
–
–
Who decides what is good and bad for a child to do?
How do they make these decisions?
Social Constraints
•
•
•
•
•
Rules from parents
Rules at school
Religious guidelines
Peer pressure
Laws of propriety (socially acceptable behavior)
– Fashion
– language/behavior
– Selfishness/selflessness
– Behavior toward opposite sex
Breaking social constraints
in literature
• gives a feeling of power when readers
identify with characters who break the
rules.
• challenges the norms and conventions of
society by testing them.
• provides a site for humor.
The Carnival Tradition
Carnival is a festive season when the normal rules of
society don’t apply. It occurs immediately before Lent;
usually during February or March. (Lent is a time on the
Christian calendar when followers give up eating meat
and/or give up something they really like in order to
prepare for the passion of Christ.) It typically involves a
public celebration or parade combining some elements
of a circus and public street party. People often dress up
or masquerade during the celebrations.
Popular Carnivals today
– Carnival at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
– Mardi Gras in New Orleans. USA
– Carnival in Venice, Italy
Carnival Venice
Carnival at Rio
Mardi Gras
Carnival
• Carnival is a time or space in which the normal
rules of society don’t apply.
• Carnivalesque literature highlights this kind of
atmosphere.
• Nonsense is one way of rejecting the formal
rules of society. This makes it empowering.
• The “grotesque” is an aspect of carnival that
celebrates the physical body and the lower
bodily functions.
Carnival
• It’s joyous, anti-authoritarian, riotous, carnal and liberatory
celebration, to escape the pressures of life.
• Participants may deliberately violate what appear to be standards of
sense and decency (which are really methods of social and
imaginative control).
• Carnivals can be a means of social control because the carnival
exists within a certain space and time. When it ends, then one more
willingly follows the rules of society once again.
• Carnival can also bring freedom and a sense of power because
people are able to do what they want to do.
• A classic scene of a Renaissance carnival appears in the opening
chapters of The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo.
Quasimodo, the hunchback, becomes the King of Fools and is
paraded like a hero through the streets.
Carnivalesque
• Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin studied Renaissance
carnivals and used the ideas he found to explain much of
what happens in contemporary society and literature.
• Something is carnivalesque when the themes of the
carnival twist, mutate, and invert standard themes of
societal makeup.
• When the standards of society are twisted, parodied, and
inverted in a playful, crazy kind of way in stories, we can
often see this as carnivalesque.
• In carnivalesque literature, as in a carnival, we may see
mixing and confrontations of the high and low, upperclass and lower-class, spiritual and material, young and
old, male and female, daily identities and festive masks,
seriousness and the comical.
Carnivalesque in children’s
literature
Peter Pan
• Neverland is a place where normal rules don’t make sense.
• Wendy still pays attention to the rules of society. She
performs the duty of a mother and is the one that brings
everyone back to reality.
• Peter follows rules of fair play.
Nonsense in Peter Pan
• What other examples can you find of
nonsense in this novel?
The Adventures of
Captain
Underpants
Dav Pilkey
Captain Underpants
Think about these questions as we read.
• Where do you see nonsense? How do you react to it?
• Do you like George and Harold? Why or why not?
• Why do you think it has become immensely popular?
• How are the rules of society inverted? (In what ways is it
carnivalesque?)
Now answer these questions
• Where do you see nonsense? How do you react to it?
• Do you like George and Harold? Why or why not?
• Why do you think it has become immensely popular?
• How are the rules of society inverted? (In what ways is it
carnivalesque?)