Irvine Welsh has probably by now become, whether one likes it or not, one of the most widely read Scottish novelists, outstripping Scott, Kelman or Banks. Welsh has so far written 5 novels and 2 collections of short stories 1 , but it is undoubtedly Danny Boyle's 1996 cinematographic adaptation of Trainspotting which gave his first novel the necessary impetus it needed in order to become a worldwide bestseller. It established Welsh as the most famous and outrageous author of a so-called youth 'subculture' and boosted his literary career. Welsh's narrative format is, it is true, particularly well suited to cinematographic adaptations : his prose is characterized by a succession of concise first-person narratives spoken by a wide range of narrators ; sharp and witty dialogues are uttered in an idiolect which helps identify characters and which gives them a particular status within a group ; a strong emphasis is also laid on music and popular culture. The 'enfant terrible' of the British literary establishment has undoubtedly carved out his literary career around specific themes, namely drugs, sex and rave parties. Violence, related either to drugs or to sex but also to football hooliganism, is also very much part of Welsh's fictional world. However what I would like to address in this paper is neither the way Welsh has exploited these themes in his literary output nor the literary value of his writings : I'd like to consider his work and his style in the light of transgression. I'd like to show that Welsh's écriture actually belongs to a trend that Mikhail Bakhtin identified as a common feature of Western literature since Rabelais and which he called the 'carnival' or 'carnivalesque' : a complex system of representations and misrepresentations made of grotesque features, of dialogic and polyphonic discourses aimed at disrupting and subverting authority.