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Grotesque Body
The grotesque body is a concept, or literary trope, put forward by Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin in his study of François Rabelais' work. The essential principle of grotesque realism is degradation, the lowering of all that is abstract, spiritual, noble, and ideal to the material level. Through the use of the grotesque body in his novels, Rabelais related political conflicts to human anatomy. In this way, Rabelais used the concept as "a figure of unruly biological and social exchange". It is by means of this information that Bakhtin pinpoints two important subtexts: the first is ''carnival'' ( carnivalesque), and the second is ''grotesque realism'' (grotesque body). Thus, in ''Rabelais and His World'' Bakhtin studies the interaction between the social and the literary, as well as the meaning of the body. Carnival The Carnival is known as the feast of fools. In America, this is better known as Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras is a religious celebration where people consume co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literary Trope
A literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. Keith and Lundburg describe a trope as, "a substitution of a word or phrase by a less literal word or phrase." The word ''trope'' has also come to be used for describing commonly recurring or overused literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works. Literary tropes span almost every category of writing, such as poetry, film, plays, and video games. Origins The term ''trope'' derives from the Greek (''tropos''), "turn, direction, way", derived from the verb τρέπειν (''trepein''), "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change". Tropes and their classification were an important field in classical rhetoric. The study of tropes has been taken up again in modern criticism, especially in deconstruction. Tropological criticism (not to be confused with tropological reading, a type of biblical exegesis) is the historical study of tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
