Holiness And Carnival

The traditional ethnic festival is a kind of folk culture created together by a nation to adapt to the need of production and life in a long historical period. It experiences gradual and imperceptible perfecting from its origin to development and permeated gradually into the social life of a specific ethnic group, and plays an important role of normalizing daily life. The course of the festival forming is also a course of the nation’s own historical cultural cohesion and heritages, we can say that learning an ethnic group’s festival culture can make us know their historical connotation and spiritual characteristics.This dissertation is a case study of Yi People’s Torch Festival in Liangshan Village, Yuanmou County, Torch Festival is the most important festival for Yi People in liangshan village. The whole course of Yi People’s Torch Festival is the most particular period when this ethnic group communicate with the dead ancestors and explore their self-identification. Thus, we can insight their historical heritance, evolution and their life attitudes under the guidance of Torch Festival. The author regards Yi People’s Torch Festival in Liangshan Village as a sequential time course, and not only focuses on two parts which are the sacrificial rite of "Duci" and the carnival entertainment of "Duge" in Torch Festival but also presents the importance of Torch Festival for Yi people’s daily lives in Liangshan Village by discussing these two parts, and pays attention to investigate the preparations, anticipation before the festival and the delaying, time horizon of recalling after the festival, only in these ways the whole outlook of Yi People’s Torch Festival in Liangshan Village can be presented.This dissertation studies and analyzes a case of Yi People’s Torch Festival in Liangshan Village by Bakhtin’s Carnival Theory, and meanwhile gives an ethnographical depth description of the Torch Festival’s folk phenomena on the spot of Field Investigation by Related Anthropological Theories. Carnival and Holiness is in fact a pair of opposite concepts, but the author draws a conclusion through a Field Investigation:carnival entertainment in the festival is really not only a sacrificial rite for the holiness but also a memorial ceremony for the holy sacrifice. This dissertation consists of five chapters.Chapter Ⅰ is an Introduction that mainly introduces the origin, status, contents and methods of the research and its values and significance; Chapter Ⅱ discusses the holiness of the fire and the legend of Torch Festival in Yi People’s culture, on the other hand, also analyzes the narrative structures in Yi People’s myths; Chapter Ⅲ regards everyday lives and the holiness of Yi People in Liangshan Village,Yuanmou County as a sequential time horizon, and describes the reason that both of them can not be separated, and gives an ethnographical depth description of everyday lives of Yi People in Liangshan Village. It’s really hard to understand their passion and expectation forTorch Festival if we can’t know well everyday lives of Yi People in Liangshan Village; Chapter IV mainly describes the characteristics of the carnival of Yi People’Torch Festival in Liangshan Village, shows that Yi People’s carnival performance in Liangshan Village is different from their usual way, shows the wrestling match about strength and wisdom, shows the animals performances with the fierce collision and particular diets of the feast through describing all sorts of activities in the Torch Field, It is in fact by these activities that the festival’s carnival is presented. They banishes their shy and restrained everyday life habits and customs to merge into the carnival field with being freed from ages and hierarchy. But the carnival behaviors of the Torch Field in Liangshan Village is different from European carnival behaviors described by Bakhtin in which nothing is a taboo and people can rebuke the Buddhist as their will. The former’s carnival behaviors are exactly to recall and evolve the holy sacrifice, they have their own internal logic and way; Chapter V mainly describes the present changes of Yi People’s Torch Festival in Liangshan Village, these changes are caused by the tourism culture’s strong intervene. Yi People in Liangshan Village come into the special time of Torch Festival with insisting their everyday life, the festival time of Torch Festival is the local Yi People’s life experience that they merged themselves into their true living experience, the Torch Field of Yi People in Liangshan Village transformed into a performing theater field from a holy field since as the foreigners’ gradual involvement into the local ethnic group’s internal carnival in the Torch Field. But It is exactly the change from a holy field to a theater and the bilateral communication with "looking" and " being looked", Torch Festival has its own unrevealed characteristics and presents a new direction on its basement.We can peep overall perspectives from one spot. Through a case study of Yi People’s Torch Festival in Liangshan Village, Yuanmou County,We can see that the carnival plays an important role in their daily life and banishes their preconceived idea that the holiness is at the opposite of the carnival, meanwhile we can offer a new perspective to investigate the other festival culture, it comes into being more precious and valuable in the present society in which both holiness and carnival are lacked.