Chapter 15, Chapter 6 - Images of the Material Bodily Lower Stratum Summary and Analysis

The author includes the farcical use of swabs. In this sense, it is quite true that one way the Renaissance people used their references to swabs was as a means of expressing anger or hostility towards someone and as a threat of the best way to utilize that individual. The swab is also described as serving more than one purpose. A swab can be used to wash a floor, but Bakhtain also quotes Rabelais as writing about the kinds of swabs that were used as we now use towels, and others used as we now use toilet paper. The author intentionally uses both sincerity and comedy in describing the uses of swabs and what might serve as swabs, including examples of an "abusive...