Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-289) and index.
Prologue: Metaphors for Approaching National Culture; Acknowledgments; 1. The Interpretation of National Culture from the Site of Popular Cultural Practice; 2. To Open Up the Night: Carnival and the Struggle for a National, Democratic, and Popular Order; 3. Theology of Carnival: The Religious Masks of Carnivalesque Theater; 4. Bodies, Costumes, and Characters; 5. Carnival Celebrates the National Popular Epic; Conclusion: From the Garden of the Comparsas; Appendix: Librettos of Principal Murgas from the Montevideo Carnival, 1988; Notes.
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Focusing on the cultural practices of the lower classes and specifically on the productions of the murgas, Carnival Theater is a consideration of Uruguayan societys identity crisis and subsequent redefinition in the wake of the regimes of the 1970s. A revealing work of cultural criticism, the book proposes a new set of criteria for the critique of national culture.