A Struggle of Genres, or a Dialogue: A Post-Bakhtinean View of Shakespeare's <em>Measure for Measure</em>

Abstract

In his book on Rabelais, Bakhtin (1965) mentions Shakespeare's name several times, but never focuses on him: Shakespeare only makes his appearances as a background figure within the compass of Bakhtins carnivalesque theory. Indeed, Bakhtin's theory won a reputation in the field of Shakespeare studies too, even though his own remarks about Shakespeare remained cursory and any detailed opinion unknown till the appearance in Russia in 1996 of the first--actually volume 5--of Bakhtin's collected works that included the archival publication of fragments absent from the original book version on Rabelais. More than ten new pages are directly devoted to Shakespeare. These pages seem important both for Shakespeare and Bakhtin, whose carnivalesque theory emerges here within a complex structure of significance and thus can be viewed with more objectivity than it probably has ever enjoyed. The almost universal enthusiasm for the carnival seems to have waned by the date of the thirtieth anniversary of Bakhtin's book on Rabelais, one that was celebrated by several revising efforts that were made clear in the international questionnaire in the fourth issue (1996) of the journal Dialogue. Carnival. Chronotope. The theory was found unreliable in many aspects. Prompted by the experiences in the Russian Revolution, it appeared not quite organic in the context of Bakhtin's writings. Some regarded it as a threat to a higher spiritual order of life, while others said it had no historical reality behind it and looked dangerous when insisting that it would realize itself in the revolutionary future. As for the author, he was suspected of one-sidedness, which suggested that if he was not completely inconsistent, then he certainly overstated the importance of the carnivalesque in the process of cultural evolution. Memorably, Bakhtin contrasted the carnival as a manifestation of the festive-folk culture to the officialdom considered serious and repressive. In the posthumously published pages from the Rabelais book, he intended for a chapter on the history of laughter. In approximately 1944, Bakhtin penned some fragmentary notes, loosely connected, for a further elaboration. But the major direction that his thought was taking is evident. The first notion he questioned and brought into a new context was Bakhtin remarked that can be both official and unofficial: Besides official seriousness, of authority, intimidating and frightening seriousness, there also exists unofficial seriousness, that of sufferance, fear, freight, weakness, of a slave and of the one sacrificed.... [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Additions and Revisions 81). To illustrate his thought, Bakhtin thus explains what he calls an unofficial of Dostoevsky [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]: This is utmost form of protest on the part of individuality (corporal and spiritual), thirsty to be eternalized, against change and absolute renovation ... A pure curse which is to be replaced in the finale by a pure praise (hosanna). [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (81-82). Seriousness has emerged here linked with a new train of terms and obviously extracted from the carnivalesque opposition where it had laughter as its sole counterpart; however, in its individualistic mode, seriousness still persists in its opposition to a regenerative process, which it reacts to with a curse, ambivalently transformed into a praise when the renovation is finally brought about. This metamorphosis demonstrates Bakhtin's tentative attempt to modify his traditional formula of folk laughter viewed as opposed exclusively to official seriousness. The first step was to find other forms of beyond officialdom. And they were found not cursed and blasphemed, as the official had been, but responding first with a curse to every renovating effort and ending in a praise addressed to the resurrected wholeness of life. …