Search results for "ordeal"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Il Dioniso delle "Baccanti" e i "piegatori di pini". Polivalenza di un'immagine leggendaria
2021
This paper investigates the mythical and ritual background of Dionysus’ representation as “fir-bender” in Euripides’ "Bacchae" (ll. 1061 ff.), in an attempt to shed light not only on the dramaturgical aspects of the tragic plot, but also on the cultural categories that make this representation intelligible to the Athenian audience at the end of the fifth century BC. Following Louis Gernet’s historical-anthropological approach based on the notion of "polyvalence des images", this paper aims to define a mythical pattern – the connection between the bending of a tree and the dismemberment of a human victim – already attested in the Attic legend of Theseus and Sinis, in which both characters se…
Devotees, A New Ordeal and A Sense of Belonging: Ethnography and Nethnography of Saint Agatha
2012
In 2004 and in 2008, the author conducted ethnographic research in Catania (Southern Italy) on one of the most important religious feasts in honor of Saint Agatha. This chapter relates Agatha's story, which is that of a Sicilian virgin martyr persecuted in the fourth century by a Roman proconsul. At the feast of St. Agatha, the three elements: the extra-ecclesial nature of popular religiosity, the transmission of knowledge through vehicles other than seminaries and other official religious institutions, and the expression of popular religiosity with signs and symbols that transmit the presence of the supernatural in everyday life, can be found. A starting point was to identify and understan…
Popular Religiosity and Collective Effervescence in Contemporary Sicily
2014
This paper focuses on the religious feasts of St. Agata, one of the most important religious feasts in Southern Italy, in the city of Catania. Drawing upon participatory observation and a netnography of virtual communities of devotees, the Christian popular religiosity towards this female Saint can be seen to represent an annual consecratory encounter between the Saint/Sacred and the local community, and also a kind of contemporary ordeal for young people. As Durkheim suggested, religion is what brings people together by reinforcing social relations and moral norms through a “collective effervescence”. This group energy, when felt by the individual, is not recognized as the result of commun…