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Paper short abstract

Between 2008 and 2020, the speaker worked extensively on European zoomorphism in folklore, focusing particularly on its ritual forms – such as masking, mumming, and carnivals. This paper revisits the author’s main findings in light of more recent scholarship, theories, and critical considerations.

Paper long abstract

European folklore is populated by a plethora of wild men, feral creatures, horned gods, satyrs and devils and other caprine figures. Narratives abound, and so do practices. One of the most common such practices, attested throughout European history and across the European subcontinent, is zoomorphic rituals, that is, rituals in which a person, traditionally a man, wears animal attributes, oftentimes also behaving in a beastly fashion.

The speaker worked extensively on this typology of ritual forms, in the years between 2008 and 2020, focusing on European traditions such as mumming and carnivals, where the motif of zoomorphism is widespread and even foundational, one might say. He worked on the historical origin, development, and more recent manifestations of this motif, analysing its morphological, functional, and structural dimensions. His findings and conclusions were informed be historiographic, iconographic, and ethnographic sources and materials, and upheld by a number of theories borrowed by cultural history, the history of religions, historical anthropology, ethnology, and folkloristics.

This paper aims to revisit the author’s main findings in light of more recent scholarship, theories, and critical considerations.