휘트먼의 시에 나타난 카니발적 세계관

Walt Whitman's Carnivalesque World View

The purpose of this study is to interpret Whitman's poetry in terms of M. M. Bakhtin's carnival theory which subverts the static view of the world. As a liberator of women, slaves, and sex, Whitman uses a rhetoric of paradox to show his egalitarian spirit which shares common ground with Bakhtin's carnival theory. Whitman's carnivalesque world view can best be summed up as follows: First, Whitman's rhetoric, which denies the governing discourses, is carnivalesque. He attempts to transcend the contrariness of dichotomy: beginning/ending, birth/death, womb/tomb/, heaven/hell, body/soul, etc. He even reveals the topsy-turvy carnivalsque world view in which good and evil are reversed. Second, Whitman accepts the material bodily lower stratum which Bakhtin talks about. Whitman considers the human body as sacred and praises sex and bodily desire as an object of praise. He even reinterprets the meaning of the bodily wastes, including feces, as a source of life force. In conclusion, Whitman's world view can best be explained in terms of Bakhtin's carnival theory.