An Analysis Of Carnival Features In Bartholomew Fair

Ben Jonson (June11th,1572–August6th,1637) was an English Renaissance dramatist,poet and actor. As a contemporary dramatist of William Shakespeare, he is best known for hissatirical plays, such as Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are consideredas his remarkable plays. As a playwright and a poet, Jonson has an unparalleled breadth ofinfluence on the times of Jacobean and Caroline. Bartholomew Fair is a comedy comprisedof five acts written by Ben Jonson, the last comedy among his four great comedies. In somerespects, Bartholomew Fair focuses on the conflict between a carnivalesque enjoyment of theflesh and the desire to control the social order.This thesis attempts to analyze Bartholomew Fair from the perspective of Bakhtinian’scarnivalization in order to explore the carnival spirit embodied in this work and Jonson’scarnival world constructed in this play. The carnival features in Bartholomew Fair areexpressed on the analysis of carnivalized elements saturated with carnival sense in terms oftheme, plot structure, characters and languages used in this comedy. This thesis endeavors toview this comedy from a new perspective, which will shed light on the growing attention ofBen Jonson and his works.This thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter I analyzes the carnival themes ofsubversion in Bartholomew Fair. As an important part of Bakhtin’s theory, carnival theoryprovides a theoretical support, social grades and convention of the mainstream culture withunique visual angle. The three themes of Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, includingsubversion of official religious orders, subversion of carnival economy and crowning anddecrowning, are to subvert the social constitution, grades and convention and achieve aneffect of comedy carnival.Chapter II deals with the carnival settings in Bartholomew Fair. The first setting is thefair. The second one is Ursula’s pub. The two settings reveal the carnival spirit.Chapter III deals with the carnival characters in Bartholomew Fair. In this paper, theauthor selects in several representative main characters, and tries to analyze the impliedcarnival spirit. The last chapter of the thesis is to analyze the carnival languages in this comedy. Thischapter reveals the carnival spirit mainly through carnival rhetoric of speech and othercarnival expression forms in language.We can draw a conclusion that Bartholomew Fair is a medieval humorous carnivalcomedy, whose carnival features show in four aspects: carnival themes of subversion,settings, characters, and languages.