Men and Bears

Morphology of the Wild

AA.VV., Enrico Comba, Daniele Ormezzano, Enrico Comba, Daniele Ormezzano

• Publisher: Accademia University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9788831978774
• eBook ISBN:
  9788831978781
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Folklore & Mythology
• Index: Social Sciences

The time of Carnival represents a "wild" time at the end of winter and pointing to the beginning of a new season. It is characterized by the irruption of border figures, animal masks, characters which recall the world of the dead and which bring within themselves the germ of a vital force, of the energy that produces the reawakening of nature and announces the growth and fertility of the new crops. This wild domain shows itself under the shapes of a contiguity between human and animal: the costumes, the masks, refer to a world in which the characteristics of the human and those of the animal are fused and intertwined. Among these figures, in particular, emerge those of the Wild Man, the human being who takes on animal-like attributes and aspects, and of the Bear, the animal that, more than all the others, gets as close as possible to the human and seems to reflect a deformed image of it. Such symbolic images come from far off times and places to tell a story that belongs to our common origins. The bear assumes attributes and functions alike in very different cultural contexts, such as the Sámi of Finland or North-American hunter-gatherers, and represents a boundary between the world of nature and the human world, between the domain of animals and the difficult construction of humanity: a process continued for centuries, perhaps millennia, and which cannot still be said complete.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Brown bears and cave bears,ancient inhabitants of the Alps Daniele Ormezzano
• Time of the bear, the bear in time Caterina Agus
• Bear Ceremonialism in relation to three ritual healers:The Basque salutariyua, the French marcou and theItalian maramao Roslyn M. Frank
• The Bear Rituals among the Sámi Juha Pentikäinen
• Bear hunt rituals in Finland and Karelia: beliefs, songs,incantations and magic rites Vesa Matteo Piludu
• Bear Traditions in Native North America Enrico Comba
• Bordering on Human: Wild Men, Bears and Fools.Amerindian and Medieval European Traditions Margherita Amateis
• The Authors