‘Carnival’: More than a jolly name: Margaret Mahy’s The Tricksters and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Carnival Theory

Authors

  • Babette Puetz Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2010vol20no2art1145

Keywords:

supernatural, Margaret Mahy, Mikhail Bakhtin’s Carnival Theory, The Tricksters, carnival

Abstract

The distinctiveness and use of the name Carnival by Margaret Mahy in her novels 'The Tricksters' and Mikhail Bakhtin in his novel 'Carnival Theory' is discussed. Looking at carnivalesque elements in the two novels does help to interpret the novels in a better way.

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Author Biography

  • Babette Puetz, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

    Babette Puetz is a lecturer in Classics at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. In addition to her interests on ancient Greek drama, myth and drinking parties (e.g. The Symposium and Komos in Aristophanes, 2nd revised edition, Oxford: Aris and Phillips/Oxbow. 2007), she has also published on modern YA / children’s literature (“Word-Power: Reading, Writing and Traveling from Story to Story in Inkheart”, Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature 19.1 (2009), 51- 58; “Harry Potter and Oedipus: Heroes in Search of their Identities”, in: A. Ndalianis, C. Mackie and W. Haslem. eds. Super/Heroes. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing 2007. 225-238). She is currently working on a book project, entitled Creature Feature: The Transgression of the Boundaries between Human, Animal and God and the Origins of Comedy, to be published with Aris & Phillips/Oxbow.

References

Bakhtin, M. (1984a) Rabelais and His World (transl. H. Iswolsky). Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

Bakhtin, M. (1984b) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (ed, transl. C. Emerson). Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

Dentith, S. (1995) Bakhtinian Thought. An Introductory Reader. London, Routledge.

Duder, T. (2005) Margaret Mahy. A Writer’s Life. Auckland, Harper Collins.

Feingold, R.P. (2005) ‘Gardening in Eden: Margaret Mahy’s Postcolonial Ghosts and the New Zealand Landscape’ in E. Hale and S. F. Winters (eds) Marvellous Codes. The Fiction of Margaret Mahy. Wellington, Victoria University Press, pp. 210-233.

Garner, A. (1975) The Guizer. A Book of Fools. London, Hamish Hamilton.

Gose, E. (1991) ‘Fairy Tale and Myth in Mahy’s The Changeover and The Tricksters’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 16.1, 6-11.

Hale, E. (2005) ‘Introduction: Marvellous Codes’ in E. Hale and S. F. Winters (eds) Marvellous Codes. The Fiction of Margaret Mahy. Wellington, Victoria University Press, pp. 7-20.

Hebley, D. (2005) ‘“A Fertility and Felicity and Ferocity of Invention”: New Zealand Landscapes in Margaret Mahy’s Young Adult Novels’ in E. Hale and S. F. Winters (eds) Marvellous Codes. The Fiction of Margaret Mahy. Wellington, Victoria University Press, pp. 187-209.

Lawrence-Pietroni, A. (1996) ‘The Tricksters, The Changeover, and the Fluidity of Adolescent Literature’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 21.1, 34-39.

Lovell-Smith, R. (2008) ‘On the Gothic Beach: A New Zealand Reading of House and Landscape in Margaret Mahy’s The Tricksters’ in A. Jackson, K. Coats, R. McGillis (eds) The Gothic in Children’s Literature. Haunting the Borders. New York: Routledge, pp. 93-115.

Mahy, M., (1986) The Tricksters. London, Harper Collins.

Marquis, C. (2005) ‘Ariadne “Down Under”: Margaret Mahy’s The Tricksters’ in E. Hale and S. F. Winters (eds) Marvellous Codes. The Fiction of Margaret Mahy. Wellington, Victoria University Press, pp. 62-83.

McVeagh, J. (1999) ‘Myth and Folktale in Margaret Mahy’s Young Adult Novels’, Talespinner 8, 17-22.

Monsma, B.J. (2005) ‘“Active Readers ... Obverse Tricksters”: Trickster Texts and Cross-Cultural Reading’, Modern Language Studies 26.4, 83-98.

Platter, C. (2007) Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.

Scally, L. (2005) ‘“Telling Stories of Desire”: The Power of Authorship in The Changeover and The Amber Spyglass’ in E. Hale and S. F. Winters (eds) Marvellous Codes. The Fiction of Margaret Mahy. Wellington, Victoria University Press, pp. 130-147.

Smith, J.R. (1997) Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in American Ethnic Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Waller, A. (2005) ‘“Solid All the Way Through”: Margaret Mahy’s Ordinary Witches’ in E. Hale and S.F. Winters (eds) Marvellous Codes. The Fiction of Margaret Mahy. Wellington, Victoria University Press, pp. 21-43.

Winters, S.F. (2008) ‘Aliens in the Landscape: Maori Space and European Time in Margaret Mahy’s Fiction’ Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 33, 4, 408-425

Published

2010-07-01

Issue

Vol. 20 No. 2 (2010)

Section

Articles

How to Cite

“‘Carnival’: More than a jolly name: Margaret Mahy’s The Tricksters and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Carnival Theory” (2010) Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, 20(2), pp. 41–52. doi:10.21153/pecl2010vol20no2art1145.