O papel das festas e liturgias na constituição da sociedade brasileira

Abstract

In this work it was analyzed the role of feasts and liturgies in the constitution of Brazilian society. Our hypothesis is that the feasts of the colonial period and still present in the life of Brazilian people nowadays doesn’t bring up only elements of a purely traditional society, but that they can be understood as the concept of “Productive Feast”, constituting a production element of sociability and society itself. This work is contained within the borders of the first centuries of Brazilian history (centuries XVI through XIX) and have as background the Baroque, specific trait of the language of affection. During the research it was identified that the regular explanations for feasts in Social Sciences are founded in hegemonic theories of Social Sciences, thus constituting a reductive vision of the feast, once they do not ensure its autonomy and perceive it only in its reproductive characteristics and not as having a founding role. To explain this perception of feasts in Social Sciences we analyzed the transition from medieval to modern society, following the hegemonic weberian model along with the other usual classic theories applied to the feasts studies, considering the classics of sociology, anthropology and philosophy. We emphasize a new way to interpret the feast through the work of Jorge Amado (2008) “Tocaia Grande” and Guimarães Rosa (2006) “Um estória de Amor”, in which we found new possibilities for the analysis of the feasts and reassure the term “Productive Feast”. The literature exemplifies the “Productive Feast” once it breaks with the concept of structure/superstructure, ensuring the autonomy of the feast and widening its interpretation in an intuitive way. In the theory of Roy Wagner (2010) we found subsidies to explain the concept of “Productive Feast”. In the end we analyzed three major feasts of the studied period: Feast of Eucharistic Triumph, Feast of The Divine and Carnival, bringing though the language of affection and the theory brought the role of the feast in the first centuries of the Brazilian history, constituting, the festive times, moments of theatralization of the society for it’s own perception, one extremely important artifice of the baroque so as the people here could identify themselves as a society.