- Paperback: 306 pages
- Publisher: University of Texas Press; 1 edition (29 Feb 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0292701918
- ISBN-13: 978-0292701915
- Product Dimensions: 2.3 x 1.6 x 0.2 cm
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
1,195,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #99 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Holidays > Christian
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Review
"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
Product Description
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 on the sophisticated theatrical performances they embody.
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Subversion and the true nature of Jesus
4 April 2012
Format:Paperback
Anyone who is familiar with folk and/or popular culture is familiar with hidden messages and subversive texts, be it the encoded instructions for escaping slaves-'Follow The Drinking Gourd'-or under the radar rock lyrics-'Satisfaction' and 'Louie, Louie'. Max Harris, in a very entertaining and intelligent fashion, illuminates those practices in carnival processions sponsored and/or orchestrated by the Catholic Church, Corpus Christi being one example. Let me say right up front that this man knows how to have a good time. He observes from the middle of the madness. He concludes again and again, with ample evidence, that the costumes and choreography may pay lip service to the civic and spiritual authorities, but often depicts them as opressors and buffoons, while the indigenous people, the moors, and the jews are the heroes. In one of my favorite passages, he tells of the Baptist who rents his port-a-potty to the revelers while grousing that his 'customers' are displeasing to God. Mr. Harris argues quite effectively that the inclusive and loving nature of God through Christ is one of the strongest undercurrents in Carnival, in covert opposition to those who have coopted Christ into their angry, judgemental, and exclusionary religions. The participants in most of the processions that Mr. Harris attended and often joined reclaim Jesus as a man of the people, which, according to the New Testament, was who Jesus said he was. I've been recommending the book to my Christian friends (I'm a Deist) and am looking forward to some lively discussions.
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