Humble Theory by Dorothy Noyes

Author:Dorothy Noyes [Noyes, Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Folklore & Mythology
ISBN: 9780253023384
Google: cUVCDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2016-10-03T03:29:08+00:00

History

Although a comprehensive history of Catalan festivals remains to be written, we can say something of the mixed social, economic, political and, of course, religious and ludic factors that brought them into being. For the Middle Ages we know primarily about court, church, and urban celebrations. These sometimes incorporated earlier ritual practices, but popular observances also emerged in contestation with institutional celebrations in a noisy dialogue that has continued to the present.

The best-known early Catalan festivals are the elaborate Corpus Christi celebrations that began in the early fourteenth century. Initially declarations of theological orthodoxy, they quickly became occasions for competitive civic display. The Corpus Mysticum, the mystical body of which Christ was the head, articulated itself in a great procession of the consecrated Host. The various corporations and elements of the local community lined up in a much-contested hierarchical order of proximity to the Sacrament. This assembly of Christ’s kingdom on Earth was complemented by representations of allegorical figures or tableaux of Biblical figures, saints, and all the company of heaven.

Interactions among the theological program, guild energies, and courtly and plebeian traditions to assemble the procession produced the characteristic Catalan festival vocabulary of entremesos or interludes, today more commonly called comparses or troupes of performers This label encompasses masked dances, mimed combats, and large mobile figures of humans and animals, molded from reinforced plaster over wooden frames (today often replaced by lightweight fiberglass) with one or more carriers underneath. Some performances were supported by music, while others called upon noisemakers and pyrotechnia of various kinds to attract attention.

The most popular comparses persisted alongside the procession or relocated themselves to the festa major in many Catalan towns. A full ensemble of them can be seen today in the Patum, a celebration that gradually detached itself from the procession in the city of Berga to become an autonomous series of dances: a combat of Turks and Christians; one of angels and devils; the guites, a pair of aggressive, long-necked mules; the elegant crowned eagle; majestic giants and the dwarves that joined them in the nineteenth century as emblems of middle-class emulation; and the plens or “full devils,” a fierce final dance of devils laden with slow-burning firecrackers.

During the Counter Reformation, the Church suppressed as many of these representations as it could and promoted new cults and confraternities to foster popular devotion. Many pilgrimages to local sanctuaries date from this period, as does the Festa del Roser, the devotion to the rosary brought by migrants from Languedoc to become deeply rooted in much of the countryside. In the same period, as plebeian communal customs became more assertive, the aristocracy and merchant bourgeoisie of the cities began to distance themselves from the intimacies of collective performance. This “retreat to the balcony” intensified an emerging identification between festival, the street, and the common people (Amelang 1986, 195).

In the modern period urban festival became increasingly plural and commercial.4 Nineteenth-century elites celebrated Carnival at private balls held in theatres, while working people had dancehalls such as Barcelona’s notorious La Patacada.

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