According to Mikhail Bakhtin in "Carnival and Carnivalesque", the central ritualistic act of the carnival is the false coronation and deposition of the carnival king. In the carnival, the complete opposite of the king – the clown or the slave – is crowned with all the colors of the ritual, only to be shamefully deposed later. This marks the beginning of the carnival and the creation of its reversed world. Bakhtin believes that the essence of the carnival lies in this act – the pathos of change and renewal, of death and rebirth. The carnival, for Bakhtin, is a celebration of time that destroys and renews everything. The coronation and deposition are a dualistic and ambivalent ritual that expresses the relativity of structure and order, as well as the contingency of authority and hierarchical positions.
Bakhtin argues that carnivalesque imagery is always characterized by duality and ambiguity. The carnival brings together opposing forces such as change and crisis, birth and death, old and young, high and low, wisdom and stupidity, and more. This dualistic imagery is a defining feature of the carnival due to its contradictory nature. During the carnival, things are turned upside down: clothes are worn in reverse, household items are used as weapons, and the clown becomes the king.
One of Bakhtin's central arguments in "Carnival and Carnivalesque" is that medieval people lived a double life. On one hand, there was the normal, official, serious, and gloomy everyday life, which was governed by strict hierarchical order and filled with fear and dogmatism. On the other hand, there was the carnivalesque life, which was free and unrestricted, characterized by ambivalent laughter, sacrilege, the defilement of sacred things, humiliations, and familiar interactions with everyone and everything. Both forms of life were legitimate, but they were separated by clear temporal boundaries. According to Bakhtin, understanding this duality is key to understanding the cultural consciousness of medieval society.