Abstract
In the 1970s, Marc Bolan of T. Rex was a glam rock superstar. He was also, in his own words, 'the best-selling poet in England', with a magic-themed poetry book, The Warlock of Love. Despite his success in the music charts, and the fan phenomenon known as 'T. Rextasy', Bolan's significance as a glam rock musician is thus far under-represented in popular music scholarship–not least, his public persona as a magical, elfin figure whose work depicted a whimsical, mythological 'world'. This world itself drew significant influence from the ancient world. Bolan's world was a hybrid one, immersed in English folklore, fairies, wizards and warlocks, Arthurian and medieval imagery, fantasy, paganism, Greek gods and science fiction as such, evoking both a sense of nostalgia and ancient mythology, with an orientation towards the future. This world offered, in Mikhail Bakhtin's words, a 'second life of the people', enacting a carnivalesque escape from the present-day realities of late 1960s and early 1970s Britain a time characterized by economic crisis and social and cultural changes. In Bakhtin's theory, the medieval pre-Lenten carnival offered a means of festivity, the reversal of social hierarchies and the taking up of alternative identities through the carnival mask, at least for the period of carnival. Carnival, Bakhtin argues, offers 'liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order', its 'second life of the people' being a life outside of officialdom and everyday constraints, determined by 'the people' themselves, the carnival participants. In what follows, I place Bolan's use of ancient imagery within a framework of Bakhtin's notion of the carnivalesque.