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Paper short abstract

In this paper I analyse how the relationship with and imaginary about the taranta, the land and supernatural beings in Southern Italy emerges from oral history, songs, narratives, myths, films, documentaries and ethnographic works, and is revived and reinterpreted in contemporary performing arts.

Paper long abstract

The taranta – a spider with natural and supernatural features that constitutes the central symbol of the mythical-ritual complex of tarantism, in Apulia, Southern Italy – had the power to motivate and influence local representations of suffering, healing practices, the imaginary, social life and the relationship of the peasants to their land. The power of taranta resides in its ambiguity, and its ability to establish connections between the natural, human and spiritual worlds and the physiological, psychological, social and spiritual dimensions of the human being.

The taranta and its encounters with human beings, as well as the life in the fields and the peasantsʼ relationship with the land, the sea, the sun, the dead and saints appear in various forms and nuances in songs, healing rituals, oral history, narratives, myths, films, documentaries and ethnographic works. They also reveal how many pasts, of different temporal thickness, which can refer to a much vaster spatial context, are encrusted in tarantism.

The taranta continues to multiply and to weave its web of meanings, in a process of recovering local traditions (focused on music and dance) that began in the 1970s and underwent a big shift in the 1990s. The taranta and tarantism continue to stimulate the imaginary and assume new meanings in artistic performances and in the narratives of the public and local agents. They also became positive values of identity, an intangible heritage and touristic and commercial products, in a complex web of interactions between local and global processes.