Abstract

Using Bakhtin’s comparison of the two basic kinds of medieval festivals - official feasts and carnivals - as seen in “Rabelais and His World,” Heilker identifies two ways to teach the ritual of writing. First, students are trained to practice only one kind of writing - the official feast of thesis and support writing. But there is also an opposing and complementary public writing ritual - the carnival - that allows for liberation from accepted conventions and the freedom for students to reinvent themselves and their worlds. Students should be prepared not only to practice the official feast, Heilker says, but also to engage in carnivalesque writing as well.