Bakhtin, Chaucer, Carnival, Lent

Abstract

Bakhtin, Chaucer, Carnival, Lent John M. Ganim University ofCalifornia, Riverside sometime in the late thirteenth centuty, the author of an entry in The Chronicle o/Lanercost logs a sensational story about a renegade priest: About this time, in Easter week, the parish priest oflnverkeithing, named John, revived rhe profane rites of Priapus, collecting young girls from the villages, and compelling them to dance in circles [to the honour of] Father Bacchus. When he had these females in a troop, out of sheer wantonness, he led the dance, carrying in front on a pole a representation of the human organs of reproduction, and singing and dancing himself like a mime, he viewed them all and stirred them to lust by filrhy language. Those who held respectable matrimony in honour were scandalised by such a shameless performance, although they respected the parson because of the dignity of his rank. If anybody remonstrated kindly with him, he [the priest] became worse [than before], violently reviling him. And [whereas] the iniquity of some men manifestly brings them to justice, [so] in the same year, when his parishioners assembled according to custom in the church at dawn in Penance Week, at the hour of discipline he would insist that certain persons should prick with goads [others] stripped for penance. The burgesses, resenting the indignity inflicted upon them, turned upon its author; who, while he as author was defend­ ing his nefarious work, fell the same night pierced by a knife, God thus awarding him what he deserved for his wickedness. 1 The entry represents all the problems inherent in the use of medieval chronicles to reconstruct political and narrative history, for it is evidence of the peculiar sense ofscale displayed in such chronicles, in which the most minor incidents are paired with nationally significant events. For an earlier generation ofscholars motivated by the great comparative enterprises ofthe nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, the entry really is evidence, for it proves what they took to be the survival of pagan, pre1 The Chronicle ofLanercost, trans. Sir Herbert Maxwell (Glasgow: Maclehose, 1913), p. 30. 59 FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS Christian agrarian fertility practices. In SirJamesFrazer, recordssuch as this (he uses a secondary source and quotes a different anecdote from the Lanercost Chronicle)2 are compiled explicitly to establish such an origin for religious ritual. In E. K. Chambers, who, we might note, is deeply in­ debted to The Golden Bough, the Inverkeithing incident might be yet one more suggestion of the origins of drama itself in such pagan ritual, and evidence also ofthe continuity offolk drama and quasi-dramatic perfor­ mances despite the hegemony ofthe church.3 For slightly later critics, such asJohn Speirs, this pre-Christian survival underliesthe rhythms ofeven the most sophisticated medievalworks, and even accounts for their literary, or preliterary and mythic, power.4 Until quite recently, the uses ofChambers and the implications ofSpeirs were limited by severe criticisms. Chambers's evolutionism had been radi­ cally called into question by the critique of0. B. Hardison's Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages. 5 Speirs's "anthropological ap­ proach" was demolished by C. S. Lewis in a still important essay.6 Moreover, the appropriation as propaganda of folkloric, ritual, and pagan imagery rendered the entire enterprise suspect, a condemnation that would not be necessary had the enterprise itselfnot been associated with social Darwinist and racialist impulses in its manifestations at the turn ofthe last century. But these questions have been opened anew by a remarkable confluence of categories in both social and literary history, and therefore require attention yet again. An interest in popular mentality and culture has been reawakened by a generation ofpost-Anna/es historians, chiefofwhom are Natalie Zemon Davis in America, Carlo Ginzburg in Italy, and Le Roy Ladurie in France.7 At the same time, a keen interest in the work ofM. M. 2 SirJamesFrazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 3d ed. (rpt., New York: St. Martin's Press, 1966), 10:286. 3 E. K. Chambers, The MediaevalStage (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), vol. 1. 4JohnSpeirs,MedievalEnglishLiterature: TheNon-Chaucerian Tradition(London: Faber, 1957). 5 0. B. Hardison, Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the...