Referat What About Games With Masks

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WHAT ABOUT GAMES WITH MASKS In the primitive societies, the early forms of disguising, masking and mimicking appeared in the process of work and were connected with magic practices. Archaic ceremonies would resort to dance, pantomime, music, pictorial and sculptural elements, poetic text, in actual fact to a complex of syncretic, typically folk, elements imitating an action. The characteristic element embodying this metamorphosis was the mask. The use of mask in theatrical representations facilitates the recognition of a character s scenic function; the mask is a formalized accessory that makes he who wears it acquire an identity and a precise signification, according to a given custom. In this south-eastern European area, as one comes closer to the understanding of the phenomenon, quite recently named masquarade, one cannot refrain from thinking of the Dionysian pageant and the masks that composed it, of the Roman ceremonies in memoriam of the dead during Whitsuntide, and of the funerary war games played by the Slavs. Individual occupations, productive activities as well as the principal moments of a man s life - birth, marriage and death -- are rigorously ordered in the calendar by a system of customs marked by fixed or changeable dates, with free intervals and periods of interdiction, which are ultimately based on a different system that coordinates and articulates that community s whole life and activity, namely religious system. The religion adopted by a group that is the "dominant" religion, expresses in a coherent, theological manner, the group s basic life views on death, immortality, sin, good and evil, truth and justice. It establishes guidelines and offers models. One cannot ignore the religious system, not even when studying complex sets of manifestations, as in the masquarade. In this case, one finds various forms of expression, coming from different superposed religions, which co-exist on a passive level, at least. One may even speak of different levels at which religiosity is manifest. However, it would be irrelevant, and many authors have proved it, to discuss only the archaic periods that have outlived through practices widely spread in European and extra-European culture, without looking at the changes signification and function wrought throughout the Middle Ages and the last hundred years or so. Devoid of the primitive additions, which today s ethnologist is trying decipher, the masked games, gliding into the pageant, continue to capture periodically the collective psyche, and why not, the individual one as well - a psyche that lucks hidden and unknown inside us all, making he who stands at the crossroad of time and life rely on the transcendent. Because in Romanian, and perhaps in many other languages, too, the word masked means "hidden, secret, unobservable, dissimulated", the occurrence of an element of transfer of signification in the traditional mask game with archaic traces was facilitated, and that helped it go on; apparently, in the past few decades, one may notice a return to some of these ancient nuances. The medieval games with mask span a bridge between archaic ceremonies, liturgical pantomimes and the l9th - century popular theatre, between the ritual mask dances, developed within the confederations and unions of agricultural and pastoral communities from the end of the first millennium AD, and the popular dramatic show. Western specialists say that the masks, which originated in the pagan representations of ancient cultures, would, in certain occasions, enter the mediaeval catholic festivals and accompany the image of the saints (Masken der Schweiz and Europa, Basel, 1960). An 18th century synopsis "that is a collection of several teachings", published in Iassy in 1757, suggests that the ancient signification of many games with masks like "turca"(the goat or stag), the games of vigil, the "calusari", the "cuci" (kookoos) has disappeared, being replaced by new ones. The wide range of games with masks and their complex character in Romanian traditional manifestations makes us assume that they do not originate from a common stock of ancient forms and structures, but had, from the very beginning, belonged to some distinct cultural categories. In Romania the goat game (zoomorphic games like turca and brezaia ) is performed at Christmas and the New Year and occasionally also during Epiphany, depending on the country s geographical zone. This game is of very ancient origin, indeed and it can be found throughout the south-eastern parts of Europe, in the Balkan Peninsula, with the northern and southern Slavs, but also in far-away zones like Armenia and Sicily where dances of the goat (he-goat} and the old men of the goat have been recorded. If the old-to-modern filiation of the New Year goat dance can be traced quite easily, the same dance, which in some places accompanies the group of carol-singers at Christmas time and whose repertoire includes exclusively Christian songs (the group carols proper), makes one wonder whether the signification s of the ancient magic rites connected with hunting and the prosperity ,of herds and flocks did not suffer some essential alterations within the Christian carol-singing context, and what exactly could the meaning of these alterations be? In Romania, particularly in the Vrancea zone, but also in Maramures, and seemingly in other parts of the country, as well games with anthropomorphic masks have been practiced of old and vigil time, at the funerary ceremonial that preceded the burial of the dead. Some specialists would see in it the group of dead old men meeting the newly deceased one get, there also exists a zoomorphic vigil goat mask, in which the performer used to lament for the dead until the assistance would chase him away. As known, a close connection exists between funerary and fertility rites; however, one should not overlook the importance of the Christian burial ceremonial, the gravity of this act and the exigency of the church and the faithful in this matter. I would suggest, therefore, to have the significance of the vigil games with masks reviewed from a theological perspective. The old form of the relationship between the goat s old man and the goat itself, as played at vigil time, has developed into the modern old man -- old woman couple, which diversifies the image of our ancestors while protecting the community and defending fertility. In my opinion, the newer pageants of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic masks from northern Moldavia, in which the doctor,the usurer, the hag and the like appear, come closer to the medieval theatre, being, perhaps influenced even by traditional May Fair shows. And yet, the ceremonial of the old men was and still is linked to the cult of the dead before shwretide which precedes Christmas and Easter fasting. Another category of games comprises the dumb - an anthropomorphic mask accompanying the "calusari" dance; since this is a Whitsuntide custom, one cannot refrain from thinking of the ancient rite of some possible worrior esoteric groups during the Middle Ages. Another category still, includes the "cuci" (kookoos) games, preserved north and south to the Danube, in the composition of which one could detect various lagers of structures and significations superposed from the antiquity to this day. The purpose of this paper has been to hint at the necessity for reconsidering the medieval character of south-eastern Europe in the light of Byzantine culture, a culture to which this area owes not only a great debt, but is also tributary for its singular brilliancy and original personality. And, speaking about the Byzantine element, it would perhaps be necessary to reconsider and re-discuss the elements of Orthodox extraction which, in contact with the ancient layers, have generated new motivations and connotations. Unfortunately, the specialists of nowadays, separated from the crucial episodes of that contact by a lapse of five hundred, sometimes even one thousand years, is incapable of deciphering, of understanding them, for that matter. 쥁`