This collection of essays presents an anthropological approach to
Carnival, primarily in its European context from classical to modern
times. The author presents this as a foundational element in the
development of European culture, including both elite and hegemonic
as well as popular and subversive constructions of the celebration.
As the author, Alessandro Testa, a research fellow in anthropology at
Charles University in Prague, points out, this work is the product of
twelve years of research, much of which was published in several
articles in Italian and English, though the author points out in his
acknowledgments that 95% of the material has not appeared in English
before. As Testa states, the collection focuses on the "symbolic,
religious and political dimensions and transformations throughout the
centuries."
The individual chapters range from Gramscian analysis of popular
culture, including Carnival and other folklore genres (Chapter 1, "A
Theory of Popular Culture from the South"), to an examination of the
historical roots of Carnival, particularly during the Middle Ages and
early Modern era, drawing on Bakhtin's 1984 analysis of Rabelais
(Chapter 2, "A Critical Model of European Carnival"). This is
followed by a chapter dealing with ritual transvestism, zoomorphism,
and various ritual aspects of Carnival (Chapter 3, "The Elusive
Origins of Carnival"). Despite attempts by others to trace the
celebration to "Paleolithic hunters and Siberian shamans," Testa
generally dismisses such claims, instead preferring to see Carnival
in more localized, culture-specific terms. Chapter 4, "Ritual
Inversions, Cultural Hegemony, and the Structure of the Conjuncture,"
deals largely with the historically identifiable development of Roman
Carnival in the medieval period, its subsequent spread largely via
the Catholic Church throughout Europe, and its subsequent reformation
and reinterpretation during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries in
places such as Florence, Venice, France, and Germany, which I found
the most interesting and intriguing chapter in the book.
Though I found the individual essays well written, the collection as
a whole suffers from attempts to interpret Carnival from numerous
angles simultaneously: historical, anthropological, cultural, and
sociological. It does provide a good introduction to the subject,
which would make it valuable for a class in folklore or cultural
anthropology. However, students would need to supplement it with
specific studies, most of which are listed in the bibliography. Testa
does provide several images of medieval and early modern mumming,
masking, and carnivalesque activities, as well as diagrams dealing
with such topics as "the ritual politics of Carnival." He concludes
with a comprehensive statement bringing together various strands of
his argument: "Carnival remains an extraordinary object of historical
analysis for understanding the sociocultural life of preindustrial
European societies" (173). Despite a few references to Carnival in
the Western Hemisphere (e.g., in Brazil), the focus remains the
European Carnival. Perhaps a final chapter on modern permutations of
Carnival would have been helpful.
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[Review length: 467 words • Review posted on June 24, 2024]