Abstract
This article introduces a new perspective on the concept of carnival as elaborated by Mikhail Bakhtin. Through a comparative analysis of Daniel Wallace’s work of fiction, Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions and Tim Burton’s film based on it, an association between carnivalesque aesthetics and ideology is established and underscored. An attempt is made to recapitulate some of the major episodes of the fantastic journey of Edward Bloom, the hero in both texts, and his utopian path towards a society that accepts his own ideals. Thus, by means of a conscientious approach to both Wallace’s novel and Burton’s film, it is possible to confirm the validity and contemporaneity of carnivalesque ideology and how it continues to permeate various planes, not only of artistic production, but also of human experience and behavior. In sum, the analysis will focus on the processes and images that carnival provides for the construction of an ideologically-different world in Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions and Tim Burton’s film Big Fish.