An Analysis of Oliver Goldsmith's *She Stoops to Conquer, Or, the Mistakes of a Night* in the Light of Mikhail Bakhtin's Concepts of carnival, dialogism, and chronotope

Oliver Goldsmith’s literary reputation was boosted by the publication of his comedy, She Stoops to Conquer, Or, the Mistakes of a Night. The frequent references to the events and literary works of the eighteenth century England have enriched the play as they attest the presence of profound meanings behind the characters’ live dialogues. This paper is an attempt to investigate the literary and social meanings of the play in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of “carnival,” “dialogism,” and “chronotope” to examine the existing dialogues and the temporal and spatial elements of the text in order to elucidate how Goldsmith, through creation of a carnivalesque situation, illustrates a society in which the voices of the servants, women, and those who are subordinated to higher authorities attain significance and are heard while the imposed social norms and ideologies of the authorities who marginalize the voice of the lower classes are questioned.