Carnival and voice : the novels of Robert Kroetsch
Date
1984
Authors
Fisher, Donald Sidney
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Abstract
Canadian writing, particularly up until the 1940's, has relied far too heavily upon literary models borrowed or adopted from extra-Canadian sources such as Britain, the United States and Europe. Extra-Canadian influences, more often than not, have stifled or repressed authentic literary expression in Canada. The novels of Robert Kroetsch demonstrate concerted, often radical attempts to subvert or undermine borrowed literary frames of reference. What Kroetsch strives for is authenticity in Canadian writing and the often irreverent and comic portrayals of setting, character,. action, language and literary form in the four Kroetsch novels examined here clearly demonstrate the success of his efforts. Kroetsch's resistance to inherited literary systems and his ability to write in an authentically Canadian manner coalesce in the pervasive carnivalesque perception of his fictive writing.
The term carnivalesque, as used in this paper, derives from the writings of the Russian literary critic and theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin whose work, Rabelais and His World, presents a detailed and extensive theory of the carnivalesque in literature. Bakhtin outlines the influence of European medieval and renaissance· popular festivals upon the novels of Francois. Rabelais. Bakhtin demonstrates how carnival and its attendant laughter serve to subvert, if only temporarily, established social power structures, to turn ·the world "topsy-turvy," changing the positions of king and clown, high and low, top and bottom. He also examines the grotesque realism which attends the carnivalesque perception of life. Grotesque realism strongly emphasizes the paradoxically regenerative degradation of the thrust down to the lower stratum of the human body or its cosmic equivalent, the underworld.
The following paper examines Kroetsch's fictive portrayal of Canadian prairie versions of the popular festival as manifested in the beer parlour, rodeo and dance episodes of his novel The Words of My Roaring. The novel celebrates the oral tradition and festive activities so central to both Canadian prairie life and the popular people's carnival. The Words of My Roaring also presents an overturning of the social and political order wherein Johnnie Backstrom, the protagonist defeats his once established political rival, Doc Murdoch.
Popular festive forms and images couple with elements of grotesque realism in Kroetsch's third and fourth novels, and they both move in content and tone somewhat beyond the more literal carnival occasions presented in The Words of My Roaring. In The Studhorse Man and Gone 1 Indian, Kroetsch depicts elements of grotesque realism such as human-animal connections, figurative descents into the underworld, and also places -a- strong emphasis upon the female figure as representative of the bodily lower stratum., All of these features are central to the carnivalesque perception.
In What the Crow Said, Kroetsch takes elements of grotesque realism, with their stress upon excrement, disfigurement and death, to their farthest reaches and, at the same time, carnivalizes almost every established convention of novelistic form. This novel, in many ways, demonstrates Kroetsch's most uncompromising deployment of carnival.
Aspects of the carnivalesque, as they are outlined in Bakhtin's literary theories, apply to a great deal of Kroetsch's writing and provide an effective and illuminating perspective from which to analyze this Canadian writer's work. An examination of the carnivalesque in Kroetsch's writing amply demonstrates his significant contributions to an authentic