Description
Book Synopsis"This impressive contribution to the anthropology of Europe is the first full-length study in English of the Patum, a Corpus Christi fire festival unique to the town of Berga, in the foothills of the Catalan Pyrenees (Spain). It also marks the emergence of an important scholar... Highly recommended."-Choice
Trade Review"An excellent model of how to approach the analysis of principal communities, in Europe and elsewhere, that are struggling to overcome internal conflicts and contradictions and find acceptable ways of participating in a wider, increasingly globalized world." *
South European Society and Politics *
"This impressive contribution to the anthropology of Europe is the first full-length study in English of the Patum, a Corpus Christi fire festival unique to the town of Berga, in the foothills of the Catalan Pyrenees (Spain). It also marks the emergence of an important scholar. Noyes combines that rarity-well-crafted and accessible prose-with a theoretical architecture that borrows from hermeneutics and the anthropology of power. . . . Highly recommended." *
Choice *
"This book stands above other festival studies in its ability not only to convey information but also, of equal importance, to recreate the emotional texture of events for performers and audience alike. . . . This book is a must." *
Journal of American Folklore *
Table of ContentsA Note on Catalonia and the Catalan Language
Introduction
PART I. REPRESENTING THE FESTIVAL
Chapter 1. Between Representation and Presence: The Onlooker Problem
Chapter 2. The Patum and the Body Politic
PART II. PERSONIFICATION AND INCORPORATION
Chapter 3. The Gaze and the Touch: Personhood and Belonging in Everyday Life
Chapter 4. The Patum Effigies: Attitudes Personified
Chapter 5. The Techniques of Incorporation
PART III. UNDER FRANCO: THE OEDIPAL PATUM
Chapter 6. Return to the Womb
Chapter 7. The Eye of the Father
Chapter 8. The New Generation
PART IV. THE MASS AND THE OUTSIDE: "THE PATUM WILL BE OURS NO LONGER"
Chapter 9. Consumption and the Limits of Metaphor
Chapter 10. Reproduction and Reduction
Chapter 11. The Patum in Spain and the World
Notes
References
Index
Acknowledgments
