Blog #3: Billingsgate, Art, and Meaningfulness

Dear All,

Answer ONE of the questions below with a thoughtful, original, polished response of between 300 and 450 words. 

1.  Bakhtin opens his exploration of Rabelais's billingsgate language with the quote:  "I want to understand you, I study your obscure language."  How can we better understand the intended audience for the pieces we had for this week (Rabelais, A. R. Ammons, the Trickster story, and "Sex with Ducks") through examining their language?

2.  Use Bakhtin (or, in addition, the other theorists we've read) to discuss whether laughter at one or more of our pieces this week is the product of nature, nurture, or some combination of the two.  (As Emmalyn suggested, perhaps we're trained away from our natures...)  Does the fact that we've seen billingsgate humor from Renaissance France, Native America, and twentieth/twenty-first-century America  suggest that there's something universal (natural) about this kind of humor?  Or, does the fact that we have to work to understand the pieces suggest that cultural (nutured) about humorous billingsgate?

Good luck!
Jennifer