Dossier arts in feasts: bodies in movement

Abstract

In the abridged edition of Georges Frazer's The Golden Branch (1982), the word feast appears one hundred and seventy-six times, as a translation of the word feast. In the great anthropological classic, the feasts of fires, beans, fools, New Year's Eve, the Virgin Diana, the solstice, Pentecost, El-Bugat, Ta-Uz, Saturn, Our Lady of Conception, and wheat stalks, to name but a few, are discussed. By seeking parallels between the events, based on some similarities in time and space, the methodology and analysis employed by the anthropologist is today questioned. In the introduction to the work in the English edition, it is Mary Douglas who alerts to the risk of a reading that focuses on the collection of curious facts, and not on the analytical thread that leads it with precision. In Darcy Ribeiro's introduction in the Brazilian edition, the emphasis is on its artistic value as a literary work. However, there is no doubt of the influence that this work produced in the field of research interested in feasts and what they can say about magic, science and religion.