Abstract :
In Rabelais and His World Mikhail Bakhtin traces the history of
laughter and the specific impact of Francois Rabelais upon that history, but more
important it is the most definitive example of the carnivalesque available to Western
scholars to date. By carnivalesque he refers to the traditional language and spectacle
associated with folk culture within the carnival season, language and images that
represent the universal truths of life, death, and renewal through the grotesque body.
Bakhtin’s theories of the characteristics of unbridled freedom illustrate the universality
and dissident effects of laughter. The revolutionary or subversive, carnival
spirit displayed by the clash between official and unofficial culture bear particular
significance upon the Harry Potter series. At the heart of carnival imagery is what
Bakhtin defines as the three elements of laughter: ‘‘universalism, freedom, and…
[their] relation to the people’s unofficial truth’’ (p. 90). These are the elements of
laughter that most adequately characterize Harry Potter’s subjective view of what is
good and right. He is at the most basic level an initiate of change who works within
the realm of the carnivalesque to illustrate the subversive qualities of laughter in
opposition to the official culture the muggle world represents with regards to race.
The carnivalesque and grotesque in Harry Potter illustrates an appeal to social
transformation through the power of laughter and the reversal of the dominant order
of race and racial difference
