The Culture of Popular Laughter is a historical-anthropological theory devised by the literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, first published in the book Rabelais and His World, based on observations of popular culture in the Renaissance. Bakhtin analysed François Rabelais' book Gargantua and Pantagruel and its portrayals of "grotesque realism" (i.e. celebrations of primary needs) and carnival in which social norms were subverted.