 friends I am back again and in this particular video I am going to talk about Mikhail Bhaktan and his famous theory of carnivalesque. Mikhail Bhaktan is a very very famous Russian critic very closely associated to structuralist school of thought and he has given a lot of theories and concepts like dialogism, heteroglossia, carnivalesque but then in this particular video I am going to restrict myself to the discussion of carnivalesque. Before we move on and understand what he meant by carnivalesque I would like you to make a note of the point that the term carnivalesque was coined by Mikhail Bhaktan in his famous book Rables and his world. So please remember the name because this was a question of a net exam so you must know that the term carnivalesque was coined by Mikhail Bhaktan in the book Rables and his world. The term carnivalesque comes from the word carnival. Now I am pretty sure that you must have been to a carnival maybe to a Diwali carnival or a new year carnival or a Christmas carnival and what do you observe in a carnival? In a carnival you will find beautiful decorations, people dressed up beautifully, enjoying, partying, shopping and you will find that everyone is enjoying life in a carnival irrespective of which social circle he comes from. The first carnival was noted to happen in medieval England, in medieval times Catholic people they used to celebrate by participating in carnivals. So there were beautiful carnivals organized in which people used to wear masks and they used to have this gala party time. So carnival is something which shows how you celebrate life and that's what Mikhail Bhaktan talks about in the theory of carnivalesque. But we are going to look at the theory soon before that I would like you to understand how he describes carnival. So in order to present the idea of carnivalesque Mikhail Bhaktan gives us an image of an old lady, an old hag and she is near her death and yet the image is presented as if she is about to give birth to a child. So an old lady who is near her death is going to give birth to a new life. You can see how two contrasting ideas are brought together by Mikhail Bhaktan and this is what according to Mikhail Bhaktan is the core of carnivalesque. Now that we know what is a carnival it's important to look at the key characteristics in a carnivalesque work. According to Mikhail Bhaktan a novel or a work can be classified as carnivalesque if the novel has the following features. The first important feature of a carnivalesque work is reversal of hierarchies. We all know that we live in a society where there is a social hierarchy. On top we have the kings or at the bottom we have untouchables. Now if you look at the medieval carnivals in which the Catholic people used to participate you will be amazed to find that in such carnivals the clowns they used to dress up as kings and the kings used to dress up as clowns. So there was an inversion of the social hierarchy. So this reversal of social hierarchy is the key characteristics of a carnivalesque work. According to Mikhail Bhaktan all the social hierarchies be it low and high, be it perfection, imperfection, lightness, darkness all these are reversed. So the inferior is going to get supreme for the time being. For example imperfections is going to be celebrated in any carnivalesque work rather than celebrating the everyday perfection, everyday light you are going to celebrate darkness. You are going to celebrate madness rather than celebrating sanity. This is the main thing related to carnivalesque. The second important characteristics of a carnivalesque work is eccentric behavior. If you look at any novel which belongs to the classification of carnivalesque you will find that the novels are filled with humor and chaos. The characters they are going to do activities which are unacceptable by the society. Eccentric behavior means when you are indulging yourself in a behavior which is not socially acceptable. The third key characteristic of a carnivalesque work is that it is going to follow a non-linear pattern of narration. If you look at any story, any novel, most of the novels are written in a chronological order. They follow a linear pattern. One event is going to lead to another event and there is a chain which goes on. You can make sense out of that novel when you are reading it from page 1 till page 50. Whereas a carnivalesque novel is going to follow a non-linear pattern of narrative. That means the story is having disjointed events and it is going to tell you events in such a fashion that you cannot jot down them in one particular way. That is the main thing which makes carnivalesque work different from normal day to day writing. And carnivalesque is very much connected to the post-modern writing because if you look at the post-modern novels of William Golding and writers like Samuel Beckett you will find that all of them follow a non-linear disjointed plot and that is what we find even in carnivalesque. So, in short, if I summarize, a carnivalesque work is going to be a celebration of freedom, equality and abundance. It is going to celebrate equality. It is going to reverse the social hierarchy. It is going to celebrate things which are considered to be socially unacceptable. There are a lot of other concepts which you must have on your tips if you are preparing for UGC net English literature. The concepts such as dialogism, heteroglossia are very important from net point of view and so is the concept of carnivalesque. There was a beautiful question that was asked from carnivalesque in the previous years. Let's have a look at the questions. So, with that note I would like to take your leave. We are going to meet very soon in the next video lecture but before you close this window, make sure that you subscribe to the channel so that you are notified every time I post a video. Do like and share this video with your friends and people who are struggling with UGC net preparation. You can also go to my website arpitaakarwa.com and check out the online course we are giving exclusively to the UGC net aspirants. That's it for this video lecture. We are going to meet very soon in the next video. Till the time we meet next, happy learning, keep loving literature and stay tuned to arpitaakarwa.com.