Women Dined Well: Bakhtinian Carnivalesque in Caryl Churchill's Top Girls

Abstract

Caryl Churchill’s most celebrated play Top Girls begins with a remarkable supper scene, where various women from history and art come together to dine, celebrate, and share stories. Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnivalesque provides a conceptual vocabulary to explore and analyze the firct act of Top Girls and show how the dinner scene functions as a “carnivalesque” that shows the reader the symbolic essence of food, act of consumption and its complex and dynamic relation with gender identities.

(abstract to be reviewed/changed before publication)