Festa eterna
Festa eterna

Summary/Abstract: The article describes the festa dei gigli – an event that belongs to an extremely wide and diverse set of folk festivals of the Italian South. Gigli di Nola is dedicated to Saint Paolino, patron of Nola; a small town near Naples. In this text, I argue that the Italian festas are the key to understanding of the respective local community. A moment of opening, a manifestation of identity, often based on oppositions: the sacred – the profane, the ordinary – the extraordinary, ours – foreign. An attempt to delineate the boundaries of these categories and their significance for a given community may lead to a more profound experience of its otherness. This text, part of the author's master's thesis, presents the founding myth, history, and course of the Gigli festival).

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