Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago
This is an excerpt from the paper...
Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago is considered "the oldest and greatest of them all, the mother of all Carnivals, often imitated, never equaled" ("Carnival, The Greatest Show on Earth"). Official Carnival lasts for two days of masquerading, but the Carnival season is much longer and involves a wide variety of activities. Carnival is a celebration associated with the coming of Lent on the Catholic calendar and is seen as the last opportunity to indulge before the sober disciplines of Lent. The word "carnival" itself means "farewell to the flesh." Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, however, also involves the inclusion of African rhythms in the music, creating the Calypso beat that marks this celebration. The history of carnival has been traced by some researchers back to the rites of Bacchus in ancient Greece, and certainly the celebration resembles Bacchanalian and Dionysian rituals. Some also theorize that early in the nineteenth century, the working population took to imitating and ridiculing the colonial authorities at Carnival time by means of extravagant costumes and an incomprehensible linguistic patois. As a result, a colorful cast of Carnival characters came into being and have continued as icons of Carnival, including devils called Jab Jabs (from the French diable), human donkeys called burrokeets, bandits called Midnight Robbers, clowns called Pierrot Grenade, and giants on stilts called Moko Jumbies ("Carnival, The Greatest Show on Earth").
. . .
grim and gruesome side, for the same god is haled as the giver of all good gifts and feared as the eater of raw flesh an the man-tearer. . . (Guthrie 145-146).
Worship of Dionysus in one of his incarnations involved the orgy. They usually took place at night. Participation was not confined to women, though they were the most frequent and characteristic worshippers:
The greatest gift of Dionysus was the sense of utter freedom, and in Greece it was the women, with their normally confined and straitened lives, to whom the temptation of release made the strongest appeal (Guthrie 148).
Direct evidence of the chronology and general history of the spread of Dionysian religion through Greece is lacking. Evidence is found in the mythology itself, such as in stories of the resistance to the advance of the cult:
These stories take the form of cult-myths, that is to say, although they seem to be connected with history by their location in actual cities which could have lain on the line of the god's advance into Greece, the result of the opposition is said to be that Dionysus drives the women of the place mad, and the leader of the resistance falls a victim to their frenzy and is torn to pieces like the victim which as sacrificed i
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Day Ash, Thebes Zeus's, Worship Dionysus, Trinidad Tobago, East Indian, Dame Lorraine, Ashura Day, Stassinopoulos Berry, Bacchus Dionysus, Apollo Apollo, carnival 1996, trinidad tobago, carnival earth, carnival trinidad, carnival trinidad tobago, hussein killed, cult apollo, 18th century, dame lorraine, fall 1998, tdr fall 1998, ancient greece,
Approximate Word count = 2087
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
