The Playboy of the Western World: A Carnivalesque Reading

Abstract: A carnivalesque reading of J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World is presented. Mikhail Bakhtin defines carnivalesque as a literary style that challenges authority and traditional social hierarchy through the use of humour and chaos, and he compares the carnivalesque in literature to the carnivals of popular culture. Several carnivalesque tropes apparent in The Playboy—inversion, subversion, grotesque imagery and ambivalent laughter—are examined, and a specific focus is placed on carnivalesque tropes in the language of the play and carnivalesque aspects in the action. Bakhtin’s framework of the carnivalesque, with both its life-affirming and death-embracing aspects and its notable focus on the inversion of opposites, is utilised to provide a fruitful, and as yet little explored, avenue to understanding Synge’s play. Such a carnivalesque framework positions this Irish play within the time-honoured tradition of European grotesque humour and provides a contrast to more traditional analyses.