Bakhtin’in Karnaval ve Grotesk Beden Kavramları Işığında Havva’nın Karnavalesk İsyanı Üzerine Bir Çalışma

Abstract

This study aims to explore the grotesque mode of representing the female body and bodily life in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, especially in Book IX, which is regarded to be the key book of the poem: the book of Man’s Fall. My main purpose is to display from a Bakhtinian perspective how the grotesque concept of the female body operates as a considerable way of representing the “monstrous-feminine.” That is, the female, in the character of Eve and in some places, of Sin, in relation to their femininity/maternity, deviates from the norm established by patriarchal male ideology and poses a constant threat to the male order. Predicating upon Bakhtin’s notion of the carnival in its alliance with the grotesque image of the body, I argue that although for Bakhtin, the “bodily element” of the carnival and grotesque realism dwells upon bodies in general and not upon bodies as determined by gender, the grotesque images can be associated with the feminine, particularly with those females who revolt against male domination. Thus, in this particular study, the body of the nonconformist female who stands for a fearful and threatening form of sexuality, will be discussed as “grotesque.” I also contend that in Paradise Lost, Eve, as well as Adam, by tasting the forbidden fruit, embraces a world turned upside down in which the marginalized and suppressed overthrow the order represented by God.