Carnaval à Soura : Bakhtine et le Talmud de Babylone

Abstract

Using the Mikhail Bakhtin dialogical theory, my concern here is with a double‑faced phenomenon: one face is simply the presence of narratives that celebrate the lower body and actively portray the Rabbis in grotesque, compromising, or ethically problematic light. The second face is the literary choice to produce and have only one book in rabbinic Babylonia, the Babylonian Talmud, in which precisely cheek by jowl we find the same Rabbis as the producers of all that is ethical, religious, and fine in the tradition.

Keywords

• dialogic imagination
• spoudogeloion
• Babylonian Talmud
• Bakhtine Mikhaïl (1895-1975)
• Mediterranean
• Middle East