The Mask: Tradition and Transformation  January 28-31, 2006

Saturday, January 28, 2006

7:00 pm to 9:30 pm Thomas Center
"Mardi Gras Masquerade" Reception
Sponsored by Harry's Seafood Bar and Grille
Jazz and Swing Music by Cathy DeWitt and MoonDancer

Monday January 30, 2006
 Thomas Center

1:30 - 2:00 pm
Introductory Remarks for Carnevale Colloquium
2:00 - 2:45 pm
Gallery Talk, "From the Collector's Eye"
Dr. Louis Guillette, Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Florida
3:00 - 3:45 pm
 "Origins: The Carnival Mask and Tradition"
Dr. Mary Watt, Co-Director of the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Florida
4:00 - 4:45 pm
"The Role of the Mask in the Western Chivalric Tradition"
Dr. Will Hasty, Co-Director of the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Florida
5:00- 6:00 pm
 Dr. Ronald Herzman, State University of New York Geneseo
"Monastic (Un) Masking: Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and Dante's Inferno"

Tuesday, January 31, 2006
 219 Dauer Hall, University of Florida

9:00 - 9:30 am
Coffee and informal Discussion
9:30 - 11:30 am
Panel Discussions featuring Dr. Robert Westin, Dr. Elizabeth Ginway, Dr. Deborah Amberson

Why Masks?

It is difficult to imagine a society or culture that does not count some aspect of masking among its traditions. Indeed archaeologists and anthropologists tell us that since at least Paleolithic times people have used masks to disguise the wearer and or communicate an alternate identity. Masks and masking rituals, moreover, are found on all five continents and in almost all instances share many of the same sociological aspects. The drive to create and wear masks then, it seems, is one of the most universal characteristics of the human animal. Throughout the ages, masks have been used to depict deities, mythological beings, good and evil spirits, spirits of ancestors and the dead, animal spirits, and other beings believed to have power over humanity. Masks of human ancestors and other spirit masks were frequently used in initiation ceremonies. In ancient Roman burials, a mask resembling the deceased was often placed over his face or was worn by an actor hired to accompany the funerary cortege to the burial site. In patrician families these masks or images were sometimes preserved as ancestor portraits and were displayed on ceremonial occasions. Such masks were usually modeled over the features of the dead and cast in wax. This technique was revived in the making of effigy masks for the royalty and nobility of Europe from the late Middle Ages through the 18th century, one of the most famous of which is the death mask of Mary Queen of Scots.

In agricultural rites, masks may represent rain or fertility deities. Similarly, animal masks may be worn in ceremonies to ensure a successful hunt. Shamans throughout the world wear masks in curative rites. In some cultures, the masked members of secret societies could drive disease or demons from entire villages and tribes. In some cultures, masked members of secret societies terrorize wrongdoers and thus enforce social codes. In parts of Africa, legal judgments were pronounced by masked judges, a practice that has a parallel in the medieval European practice of masking the executioner.

In festivals, masks may be used for entertainment, storytelling, caricature, and social satire. Grotesque war masks were worn in battle in ancient Greece and Rome, in medieval Japan, and by the Northwest Coast peoples of North America. They served not only as protection but also as a means of transforming the ordinary human into a warrior. Indeed it was precisely the ceremonial aspect of donning the mask that imbued it with its magical protective power and allowed the soldier to join the pantheon of war gods if only temporarily.

Masks have also been used almost universally to represent characters in theatrical performances. The mask as a device for theater first emerged in Western civilization from the religious practices of ancient Greece. In the worship of Dionysus, god of fecundity and the harvest, the communicants' attempt to impersonate the deity by donning goatskins and by imbibing wine eventually developed into the sophistication of masking. In the Middle Ages, masks were used in the mystery plays of the 12th to the 16th century to represent portray devils, demons, dragons, and personifications of the seven deadly sins. The 15th-century Renaissance in Italy witnessed the rise of the Commedia dell'Arte that relied heavily on stock characters easily identified by the masks they wore.

Yet the use of the mask need not be relegated to the past. Almost all of the uses noted above survive though somewhat transformed, in the Modern era. Ritual masks survive in modern Western culture in various folk pageants and customs such as Halloween and carnival masquerading, and occasionally in other instances. Vestiges of the Commedia dell'Arte survive in the form of puppet and marionette shows and in the continued use of the masks of the more popular characters as Carnevale disguises. But less obvious perhaps are the more quotidian examples of the continuing significance we attach to masking. The "prom" dress and the bridal veil are essential elements of their respective rites of passage. The barrister's and magistrate's robes continue to transform a lawyer into advocate, a champion of the court doing battle on behalf of the client in a system that dates back to a time when such competitions were settled by knights with helmets and lances. In the same vein, the donning of the football or hockey, or for that matter any sports uniform on game day, complete with helmet and mask, reminds us of the close link between actual war and the vicarious battle that is game day. In each case the use of masks preserves a tradition while effecting an essential transformation.

In his pivotal work The Way of the Masks, the great scholar Claude Levi Strauss maintained that masks cannot be interpreted in and of themselves, as separate objects but rather must be considered within the context of the transformation they effect and the mythology their maintain. The organizers of this colloquium could not agree more. We encourage participants to consider the mask not merely as as artefact items but as entity, part of a greater collective representative of humanity on the whole and its continuing paradoxical drive to preserve its greatest shared tradition; the timeless desire for personal transformation.

--Mary Watt

Presented in association with

The City of Gainesville Department of Cultural Affairs

Generously supported by
The Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies
The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Program in Italian Studies

Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Will Hasty, 254 Dauer Hall, 392-2101 (203)
Email: hasty@germslav.ufl.edu

Mary Watt, 237 Dauer Hall, 392-2016 (243)
Email: watt@rll.ufl.edu