Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Bra şov Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies • Vol. 4 (53) No.1 - 2011

GROTESQUE MOTIF OF MADNESS AND FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF ENLIGHTENMENT REASON

Soňa ŠNIRCOVÁ 1

Abstract: The paper discusses the motif of madness that Angela Carter employs in her novel Several Perceptions. Romantic and carnivalesque aspects of the motif are analyzed with the aim to examine its role in Carter’s feminist critique of Enlightenment reason. The author argues that the ‘official reason’ that is challenged by the grotesque behaviour of Carter’s ‘mad’ hero acquires the form of the middle-class culture of ‘normality’, rooted in the Enlightenment tradition. Undermining validity of the rationality that itself produces madness of war, Carter at the same time draws attention to its patriarchal nature.

Keywords: grotesque motif of madness, Enlightenment reason, carnivalesque, M. Bakhtin, A. Carter.

One of the most important grotesque seen as a simple negation of the ‘official motifs that Bakhtin discusses in Rabelais reason’ because its nature is deeply and his World is the theme of madness, ambivalent: ‘It has the negative element of which is ‘inherent to all grotesque forms, debasement and destruction (...) and the because madness makes men look at the positive element of renewal and truth. world with different eyes, not dimmed by Folly is the opposite of wisdom – inverted “normal”, that is by commonplace ideas wisdom, inverted truth’ (Bakhtin 260). In and judgments’ (Bakhtin 9). As Bakhtin the context of carnival, folly does not explains, ‘In folk (carnival) grotesque, represent just a playful escape into madness is a gay parody of official reason, irrationality, but it becomes a source of a of the narrow seriousness of the official different, not ‘normal’ perception of the “truth”. It is a “festive” madness’ (Bakhtin world that in its final effect leads to the 9).Various carnivalesque festivities, such regeneration of reason. Carnivalesque as feasts of fools or feasts of the ass, grotesque images of madness, identified by created an opportunity to experience Bakhtin in the works of great authors, such liberation from the strict rules that as Rabelais, Erasmus or Cervantes, reflect governed the everyday life of medieval the tradition of the folk culture of carnival people. Carnivalesque acts of madness in their focus on the positive, regenerating (folly, clownery) challenged the ‘official potential of unreason. ‘In Romantic reason’ (i.e. the established order and grotesque, on the other hand, madness ideology of medieval society) that could acquires a somber, tragic aspect of not be questioned beyond the limits of the individual isolation’ (Bakhtin 9). feast. Still, this festive madness cannot be

1 PhD. P.J. Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia. 18 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Bra şov. Series IV • Vol. 4 (53) No.1 - 2011

Bakhtin’s distinction between carnival British feminist author Angela Carter, grotesque and Romantic grotesque whose novel Several Perceptions (1968) is representations of madness points to a at the centre of my attention in this paper. significant change in the perception of The story of Several Perceptions focuses insanity in Western culture that Michel on a young man Joseph who suffers from a Foucault associates with the movement of distorted perception of reality, whose mind the Enlightenment. Thus, while carnival is tormented with horrific nightmares, and grotesque perception of madness as ‘a gay whose attempted suicide by a gas parody of official reason’ suggests a explosion appearing at the end of the first dialogical relation between reason and chapter creates the central point from unreason that, according to Foucault 1, still which the rest of the narrative develops. existed in the Middle Ages and the Influenced by the Laingian view of Renaissance, the Romantic grotesque madness (Gamble 58), Carter joins the emphasis on the isolating aspect of literary tradition of ‘presenting a mad madness corresponds with Foucault’s point epoch through the eyes of a madman’ that after the Age of Reason such a (McElroy 97), as she focuses on the mind dialogue was no longer possible (Foucault of the character whose obsession with his 5-8). Romantic grotesque presentations of own death is paralleled with his obsessive the insane as beings locked in their own preoccupation with the cruelties of the world, in a way, paralleled the real life Vietnam War. tendency to confine them in hospitals and In the following pages I argue that the emphasis on the terrifying nature of besides the presentation of the isolating madman whose soul is occupied by ‘an and alienating effect of insanity, inhuman spirit’ (Kayser 184) reproduced highlighted by the Romantic and modernist the post-Renaissance approach to madness grotesque, Carter’s image of Joseph’s that excluded it from the realm of madness includes some important humanity 2. A further historical shift from grotesque elements that resemble typical the focus on the inhuman, animal-like carnivalesque resistance to the ‘official condition of the insane to the perspective reason’. My aim is to show that Carter that stresses their alienation from the world associates this ‘official reason’ with the of Reason, introduced in the context of the normative mainstream culture’s vision of 19 th century asylum 3, found its (modified) social life, questioned by the 1960s reflection in the post-Romantic, modernist counter-cultural movements, to present a grotesque 4. The crisis of Enlightenment critique of the ‘reasonable way of life’ that reason that reached its peak in the second originated in the middle classes’ half of the 20 th century has brought another embracement of the Enlightenment change in the perception of insanity, rationality 6. At the same time I argue that reflected, for example, in the opinion that the principle of regeneration that the novel madness can be seen as a ‘normal’ reaction foregrounds appears not only in the form of the modern man to the ‘mad’ world in of a carnivalesque Christmas party, which he exists 5, or in, what Patricia focused on by such critics as Peach or Waugh sees as, ‘a dangerous tendency in Gamble, but also in the form of Joseph’s the various postmodern critiques of reason, encounter with a grotesque female body. which circulated in the 1980s, to regard Carter uses this grotesque body to alterity as a sublime space outside law, emphasize the patriarchal character of the recoverable through madness, hysteria, or ‘official reason’ that the protagonist of her some metaphorised return to the body’ novel opposes. (Waugh 350). At the moment when Joseph, after his One of the 20 th century writers who unsuccessful attempt to kill himself, finds frequently employ the theme of madness is out that ‘he (is) sick, shocked and shaken, S. ŠNIRCOVÁ: Grotesque Motif of Madness and Feminist Critique of Enlightenment Reason 19 padded out in a grotesque clown costume education, a convenient job, as well as his of bandages, but still alive’ (Carter 22), the willing acceptance of poverty (‘Joseph was gloomy tone of despair, adopted in the very poor at this time as he was giving all opening pages of the narrative, is replaced his money to beggars’(Carter 1)) are all by the sense of ridiculous, stressed by signs of that kind of irrationality, Joseph’s realization that he is ‘no tragic foolishness that Bakhtin, drawing on suicide but a furious august now done up Rabelais, sees as ‘a form of the unofficial in comic swathes like the Michelin man’ truth. By “unofficial” is meant a peculiar (Carter 26). The shift in the depiction of conception free from selfish interests, the central character from the tragic-hero- norms, and appreciations of “this world” dying-of-unhappy-love stylization (Joseph (that is, the established world, which is plans his death as a punishment of his ex- always profitable to serve)’ (Bakhtin 262). girlfriend for leaving him) to the grotesque Like the fooleries of the Rabelaisian clown image introduces the mixing of the madman that are normally believed to be Romantic and the carnivalesque that is symptoms of insanity, also Joseph’s characteristic of the novel’s presentation of ‘failure’ to adjust himself to the established the theme of madness. A similar move (middle-class) ways of living is perceived from the Romantic to the carnivalesque by society as a sign of his mental illness. appears when the imagery that pictures Thus while from the Rabelaisian Joseph’s state of mind as the cause of his (carnivalesque) perspective Joseph’s isolation from society gives way to the ‘freedom from personal material interests’ images in which his ‘irrational’ acts (Bakhtin 262) would be the expression of resemble the carnivalesque challenge to the folly understood as the ‘inverted the authority of official ideologies. While wisdom, inverted truth’ (Bakhtin 260), at the beginning Joseph’s hope that the from the perspective of ‘normality’, fixation on facts could help him ‘to shore represented in the novel by his psychiatrist, up the crumbling dome of the world’ Joseph’s ‘charities’ (his distribution of the (Carter 3) implies a rising gap between his little money he has among the ‘meths mind and reality, which suggests the drinkers and rag pickers’) are interpreted isolation of a madman, later it becomes as ‘pathological indications’ (Carter 62). clear that Joseph’s conflict with the real is Further mixing of the Romantic and not portrayed so much in terms of mental carnivalesque grotesque elements that lie illness, but more in terms of his at the heart of Carter’s treatment of the unwillingness to accept the established theme of madness in Several Perceptions truths and normalities of the 1960s society. appears in the scenes that show Joseph Aidan Day, who focuses on this historical during his compulsory sessions with dimension of the conflict, stresses that psychiatrist Ransom. Although it is his Carter’s hero experiences alienation from encounters with the psychiatrist that most ‘a governing order that sanctions the clearly reveal that Joseph’s ‘madness’ can atrocities of the Vietnam War’ (Day 34). be read as a form of resistance to Indubitably, Joseph’s obsession with the ‘normality’ (‘“A good deal of your Vietnam War plays an important role in sickness is merely a failure to adjust to the the novel’s unmasking of the insane twentieth century,” (Ransom) said’ (Carter aspects of the apparently rational order of 63)), they also show that, unlike in society. However, Carter’s portrayal of the Rabelais’ books, in Carter’s novel the character also includes such elements that presentation of the old conflict between the invite the reader to consider some further unofficial and official truth lacks the aspects of the relation between reason and cheerful atmosphere typical of unreason, wisdom and folly, rationality carnivalesque parodies of the‘official and madness. Joseph’s rejection of a good reason’. This difference becomes 20 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Bra şov. Series IV • Vol. 4 (53) No.1 - 2011 especially apparent at the moments when with a similar process of renewal in the the joyless tone of the narrative clashes sphere of society. From this perspective, with the carnivalesque forms of Joseph’s Joseph’s sending of excrement to the rebellion against authority. For example, White House appears not only as a sign of when Joseph tries to shock his psychiatrist the hero’s derisive attitude to the by posing the question ‘What would you presidential authority, but also as an say if I told you I’d desecrated a church?’ expression of the need to ‘bury’ the ‘old’ (Carter 61), he speaks about the act that truth of the White House ideology and created a firm part of the medieval feasts bring regeneration to the war-stricken of fools, being seen as a manifestation of world. the ‘gay folly (that) was opposed to the The potentially positive, regenerating “piousness and fear of God”’ (Bakhtin aspect of the scatological image is in 260). However, the psychiatrist’s answer Carter’s presentation of Joseph’s derisive (‘I’d remind you Shelley’s dead’, said act strongly reduced due to the scene’s Ransom, ‘Byron, too’ (Carter 61)), lack of any sign of the gay laughter that indicates not only that he perceives this act plays a crucial role both in Rabelais’ in terms of a purely negative blasphemy books, as well as in the debasing rituals of which was so popular with Romanticists, the carnivalesque feasts of fools. The but also that Joseph, who is ‘delighted’ by whole scene is dominated by what Bakhtin Ransom’s recognition of the connection, marks as typically Romantic, ‘infernal’ consciously stylizes himself into the tragic humour (Bakhtin 41), which is signified in role of a Romantic rebel (Carter 61). the text by the expression ‘ bizarre joke’ Another example of the absence of the (my emphasis) and, even more noticeably, carnivalesque merry laughter can be found by the fact that while preparing his in the scene where ‘Joseph and his grotesque Christmas gift, Joseph ‘laugh(s) grotesque angel conceived a bizarre joke; in a demonic fashion’ (Carter 83). they decided to send a piece of excrement Moreover, Joseph’s own perception of his to Lyndon Johnson’ (Carter 83). Like the joke in terms of purely negative, gloomy desecration of the church, this act of humour is further emphasized when Joseph Joseph’s rebellion against the established realizes that if his psychiatrist learnt about authority (this time the one that he holds the joke, his ‘actions would be translated responsible for the atrocities of the from ironic moves in a black farce to ideas Vietnam War) points to the medieval of real madness’ (Carter 84, my festive rituals of debasement in which emphasis).Thus, in the images that present scatological elements held an important Joseph’s ‘madness’ as a reaction to the position. As Bakhtin explains, stressing the outside (social, political) world the positive nature of the scatologies that regenerating aspect of the grotesque is appear in Rabelais’ works, ‘the slinging of reduced to the minimum by its association dung, the drenching in urine, the volley of with the Romantic tradition (desecration of scatological abuse hurled at the old, dying, the church as purely negative blasphemy, yet generating world (...) represent the gay sending of excrement as a purely derisive funeral of this old world (...) (and if these act, demonic, destructive laughter aimed at images are) applied to the gloomy, the figure of authority). disincarnated medieval truth, (they Similar negative grotesque elements seem symbolize) bringing it “down to earth” to dominate the images that remind the through laughter’ (Bakhtin 176). What reader that Joseph does suffer from a allows Rabelais to adopt the positive certain degree of mental instability. perception of excrement as ‘joyous’ matter Besides the actual suicide attempt, it is is, of course, its function in the process of Joseph’s dreams that indicate his serious regeneration in nature, which is paralleled mental problems. At the beginning these S. ŠNIRCOVÁ: Grotesque Motif of Madness and Feminist Critique of Enlightenment Reason 21 dreams take form of the nightmares in thought’ (Peach 53), the images that which he acts as a killer of children or as dominate the above-quoted passage betray his own murderer. Filled with horrific their connection with the world of carnival. grotesque images of death and destruction, As Stallybrass and White state, there exists these nightmares do not just allow a deeper examination of Joseph’s personality, but a complex relation of the discourse of also illustrate that in the pages leading to psychoanalysis to festive practices. The his attempted suicide, Carter’s depiction of demonization and the exclusion of the his irrational state of mind draws on carnivalesque has to be related to the Romantic grotesque imagery 7. However, victorious emergence of specifically bourgeois practices and languages which the dream that appears later in the novel reinflected and incorporated this material reveals the influence of a different within a negative, individualistic tradition: framework. In one way or another Freud’s patients can be seen as enacting desperate They ordered ice-cream and, when the ritual fragments salvaged from a festive glass dish appeared, there lay Mrs tradition, the self-exclusion from which Boulder in her vanilla-coloured suit. Her had been one of the identifying features of eyes were closed and her hands crossed their social class. The language of upon her breasts. As soon as he picked up bourgeois neurosis both disavows and the wafer biscuit, the bowl began to grow; appropriates the domain of calendrical soon it covered the table. He dug the festive practices. (Stallybrass, White 176). spoon in about her navel. She was very rich and creamy to taste. The more he ate, The analyzed passage clearly resembles the larger she grew (...) Joseph realized he carnivalesque banquet scenes in which would have to clamber inside the bowl to excessive eating and drinking signify ‘the continue eating as the bowl was now far bigger than the table and still growing in triumph of life over death’ (Bakhtin 283) size. He did so (...) and scooped up greedy and at the same time connects them with fistfuls of Mrs Boulder’s delicious an image of the grotesquely hyperbolized viscera, cramming his mouth full, but female body that points at the suddenly he realized this creamy snow carnivalesque grotesque representations of was melting; before he could escape a woman as ‘the bodily grave of man’ shuddering avalanche swept down upon (Bakhtin 240). According to Bakhtin, both his head, and he was gone for good, dead carnivalesque banquet images as well as and buried all at once in the polar night of the grotesque images of the female body Mrs Boulder’s belly. (Carter 75-76) are in folk culture closely linked to the cycle of life, death and regeneration, Joseph’s obsession with his own death is underlying the natural connection between in this case enwrapped in the imagery people and the world. The fact that Joseph typical of the carnivalesque grotesque in is, on the one hand, depicted as swallowing which the negative act of dying always the ‘creamy snow’ of Mrs. Boulder’s body encompasses the positive element of and, on the other, as finding his grave in regeneration. Creating this image Carter the ‘polar night’ of her belly indicates that most probably did not follow the tradition Carter’s presentation of the female body of the carnivalesque grotesque in any echoes the tradition of the carnivalesque conscious way, as she was more indebted grotesque which treats it as a symbol of the to the psychoanalytical theory of Freud Mother Earth that provides people with the whose writings, rather than those of life-preserving food and to whose belly Bakhtin or Rabelais, had a major influence they return after their death. Functioning as on her 1960s works. Nevertheless, even if a symbol of the Mother Earth, the female Joseph’s dreams ‘betray the influence of body acquires a strongly ambivalent twentieth-century psychoanalytical 22 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Bra şov. Series IV • Vol. 4 (53) No.1 - 2011 character since besides being perceived as makes her living as a prostitute, Carter ‘the bodily grave of man’, it also creates here a version of the ‘wayward, represents the life giving principle. Thus, sensual, concupiscent’ woman of the although Joseph’s dream appears to ‘Gallic tradition’, whose ‘materiality and proceed from the life-affirming act of baseness’ is set in contrast with man’s eating, through which the ‘victorious body ‘stupidity, hypocrisy, bigotry, sterile receives the defeated world and is senility, false heroism, and abstract renewed’ (Bakhtin 283) to the seemingly idealism’ (Bakhtin 240). In the Gallic negative image of his own destruction, the (popular comic) tradition woman fact that his death is portrayed as his represents the ‘material bodily lower disappearing in the female belly, which stratum’ that debases the ‘high’ culture of does not only bring destruction (for the man, unmasks its sterile elements, and things ‘swallowed’) 8, but also gives birth brings the element of regeneration suggests that the idea of death is not (Bakhtin 240). Like this Gallic woman, strictly separated from the possibility of Mrs. Boulder can be read as an revival. Unlike his nightmares, this dream embodiment of the female principle that suggests Joseph’s subconscious for Joseph opens the possibility of anticipation of the process of the mental liberation from the established order of regeneration that he undergoes as a result ‘normality’ represented by the patriarchal of his later real life encounter with Mrs. figure. Boulder’s body. This possibility is reinforced in the Joseph’s making love to Mrs. Boulder’s concluding part of the novel that presents a grotesque body, marked by fatness and carnivalesque Christmas Eve party ageing appears to have a similar effect as organized by Joseph’s hippie friend to the carnivalesque contacts with the bodily celebrate the temporary truce in the element that in the context of medieval Vietnam War. Carter’s critics often read carnivals provided at least ‘temporary the carnivalesque party as suggesting the liberation from the prevailing truth and idea of cultural renewal through the new from the established order’ (Bakhtin 10). ways of living introduced by various When Mrs. Boulder reminds Joseph that countercultures. Peach reads it as ‘a ‘Father is only a word (...) but mother is a metaphor for the collective, utopian future fact’ (Carter 116), on the one hand, she envisaged in 1960s hippie counterculture’ makes a private remark about the unknown (Peach 56) and Day believes that ‘the father of her son, but on the other, she also counterculture (...) is celebrated as an points to the old conflict between the alternative model of human relationships materiality and actuality of the (maternal) to that of the old order of fathers and wars body and the abstract ideology of father (Day 38). However, as it seems, the figures, which is central to the carnival carnivalesque party presents the idea of vision of the world. As Joseph’s response regeneration not so much on the social or to Mrs. Boulder’s remark reveals, just like cultural level but more in the form of carnivalesque festivities, Carter’s text Joseph’s personal ‘rising’ from the world draws one’s attention to this conflict to of the dead: relativize the validity of the ‘official truth’ A girl in white Levis and a hat with of ‘fathers’: ‘“You mean, Father is only a cherries and flowers on it cried out: ‘Well, hypothesis?’ suggested Joseph (...) “You I never, it’s Joseph’s Harker, detached mean, Father is a kind of wishful herself from the crowd and kissed him . . . thinking,” pursued Joseph. “Screw you, ‘I thought you were dead,’ she said. Ransom, my father figure” (Carter 116- ‘I rose again,’ explained Joseph. (Carter 117). Giving the power to subvert the 126). patriarchal authority to Mrs. Boulder who S. ŠNIRCOVÁ: Grotesque Motif of Madness and Feminist Critique of Enlightenment Reason 23

The brief allusion to the rising Sun god rejection of the man of reason (the of the ancient winter solstice celebrations psychiatrist) who is in the novel associated indicates that Joseph’s mental renewal is not only with rationality in the sense of not determined only by his ‘finding mental sanity, but also with the rational solidarity with the counterculture’ of the order understood in its social, cultural and hippies (Day 38), but that it is also put into political aspects. the context of the cyclical rebirth of nature, In this way Carter joins the postmodern central to the culture of carnival. The critique of Enlightenment reason, Christmas party includes such important perceived here as underlying the traditional carnivalesque elements as the celebration bourgeois, middle-class culture whose of the regenerating bodily freedom specific character was created in the 17 th (suggested by Joseph’s having casual sex and 18 th centuries by its separation from with a plump girl Rosie) and a brief everything low, grotesque, from the presence of all embracing carnivalesque ‘messy, disruptive, violent nonsense of laughter. The utopian atmosphere of the carnival’ (Stallybrass, White 190, my carnivalesque party brings the narrative to emphasis). Carter creates a character that a positive resolution that reinforces the in his ‘madness’ challenges the ‘normal’ potential of the carnivalesque to bring at way of life as defined by this ‘official least temporary liberation from the reason’ of middle classes (Joseph’s authority of patriarchal figures and their rejection of a good education, a convenient ‘official reason’. job, his willing acceptance of poverty) and To conclude, in Several Perceptions who is put in a clear opposition with the Carter presents an image of madness that mainstream culture by his association with mixes both Romantic and carnivalesque what this culture perceives as the ‘low’, grotesque elements. This mixing appears in contaminating sphere of the grotesque the images that present Joseph’s ‘mad’ (represented in the novel by the dirt behaviour as well as his disturbed mind producing and degenerating old bodies of (his dreams). Thus Joseph’s sending of his patients, the grotesque body of the excrement to the American president can prostitute, a figure that threatens the be interpreted as a sign of insanity middle-class norm of sexual behaviour, (psychiatrist’s perspective) or as a and the subversive carnivalesque weakened version of the carnivalesque act counterculture of the hippies that reject the of debasement that points to Joseph’s manners, norms and traditions of their subconscious wish to ‘renew’ the ‘official father figures). Carter uses the conflict reason’ of the authority responsible for the between the protagonist’s ‘madness’ and Vietnam War. Similarly, in the image the ‘official reason’ to undermine the presenting Joseph’s disturbed state of mind validity of the rationality that itself (his dreams) Romantic grotesque elements produces madness of the (Vietnam) war. suggest real mental illness (focusing the Furthermore, when Carter puts emphasis reader’s attention on the possible on the presentation of the representative of psychoanalytical explanations of the the ‘official reason’ (the psychiatrist character’s problems), while carnivalesque Ransom) as a father figure, she draws grotesque imagery is again associated with attention to its patriarchal character and the idea of renewal, this time Joseph’s own thus enriches her critique of the mental regeneration. This regeneration is Enlightenment reason with a feministic paradoxically achieved through the perspective. 24 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Bra şov. Series IV • Vol. 4 (53) No.1 - 2011

Notes 8 As Bakhtin says, in folk (carnivalesque) culture the earth is seen as the ‘mother which 1 According to Foucault, systematic attempts to swallows up in order to give birth to put the mad into internment appeared from something larger that has been improved’ the 17 th century onwards. [Bakhtin 91]. 2 In contrast to the Renaissance during which madness still existed as part of the human References world (either in the form of folly that mocked reason, or as the insanity that pointed to the 1. Bakhtin, M.: Rabelais and His World . existence of the dark side of human nature), Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: in the Enlightenment madness lost its Indiana University Press, 1984. connection with humanity and society started 2. Carter, A.: Several Perceptions. to treat the mad as animals [Foucault 56-71]. 3 London: Virago, 1995. In the chapter on the birth of the asylum, established as a specific institution for the 3. Day, A.: Angela Carter . The Rational mentally ill, Foucault illustrates how the Glass. Manchester: Manchester asylum incorporated patient into the power University Press, 1998. structures that produced for the insane the 4. Foucault, M.: Dějiny šílenství . Trans. position of alienated subjects. Věra Dvo řáková. Praha: Nakladatelství 4 The relation between mad (or possibly mad) Lidové noviny, 1993. protagonist and outside world is a topos that 5. Gamble, S.: Angela Carter. Writing th frequently appears in the 20 century From the Front Line. Edinburgh: literature [McElroy 95].Besides the works of Edinburgh University Press, 1997. Kafka, important examples of this trend, 6. Kayser, W.: The Grotesque in Art and analyzed by McElroy, include the work of Literature. Trans. Ulrich Weisstein. Gunter Grass ( The Tin Drum ), Vladimir Nabokov ( Pale Fire ) and Samuel Beckett New York: Columbia University Press, (Watt ). 1981. 5 McElroy points out the opinion of post-war 7. Kraj čovi čová, S.: Prostriedky psychiatrist R. D. Laing who in his work The neverbálnej komunikácie v diskurze Divided Self (1960) argues ‘that the world, at literárneho diela . In: Sabol, Ján (ed.) least the Western world as it is presently Štylistika neverbálnej komunikácie. constituted, is itself based on schizophrenia Zborník príspevkov z medzinárodnej and that certain kinds of schizophrenia, far konferencie konanej na Pedagogickej from being aberrations, are inevitable fakulte UK 15.-16.2.1996. Bratislava: responses to modern experience, and should Pedagogická fakulta UK, 1997, s. 121- be recognized as healthful and creative states 126. of mind’ [McElroy 94]. 6 As Stallybrass and White show in their study, 8. McElroy, B.: Fiction of the Modern the rise of middle classes as the dominant Grotesque . New York: St. Martin’s social group in the 17 th and 18 th century was Press, 1989. closely associated with their appropriation of 9. Peach, L.: Angela Carter. London: Enlightenment values and clear rejection of Macmillan Press, 1998. everything that could be marked as irrational, 10. Stallybrass, P., A. White: The Politics disruptive, dirty, grotesque. and Poetics of Transgression. Ithaca, 7 An examination of Joseph’s personality on New York: Cornell University Press, the basis of his nightmares can be found in 1986. the study by Linden Peach, who, drawing 11. Waugh, P.: Postmodernism and attention to the Gothic character of their Feminism . In: Rice, Ph., P. Waugh, imagery, reads the horrific dreams as the eds. Modern Literary Theory. London: expressions of ‘the negative aspects of [Joseph’s] subconscious’ [Peach 52]. Hodder Arnold, 2001.