"Dr. Harris has preempted a field almost unto himself: the study of
contemporary festivals that have their origins in tradition,
history, and the great religious celebrations of the past.... [This
book] represents a masterful achievement." -- Milla Cozart Riggio,
James J. Goodwin Professor of English, Trinity College, Hartford,
Connecticut
With a riotous mix of saints and devils, street theater and
dancing, and music and fireworks, Christian festivals are some of
the most lively and colorful spectacles that occur in Spain and its
former European and American possessions. That these folk
celebrations, with roots reaching back to medieval times, remain
vibrant in the high-tech culture of the twenty-first century
strongly suggests that they also provide an indispensable vehicle
for expressing hopes, fears, and desires that people can articulate
in no other way.
In this book, Max Harris explores and develops principles for
understanding the folk theology underlying patronal saints' day
festivals, feasts of Corpus Christi, and Carnivals through a series
of vivid, first-hand accounts of these festivities throughout Spain
and in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Peru, Trinidad, Bolivia, and Belgium.
Paying close attention to the signs encoded in folk performances,
he finds in these festivals a folk theology of social justice
that-- however obscured by official rhetoric, by distracting
theories of archaic origin, or by the performers' own need to mask
their resistance to authority-- is often in articulate and complex
dialogue with the power structures that surround it. This discovery
sheds important new light on the meanings of religious festivals
celebrated from Belgium to Peru and onthe sophisticated theatrical
performances they embody.
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