European Carnival: Traditions and Modernity

The purpose of the article is to consider the experience of carnival entertainment arrangement as an artistic and aesthetic phenomenon and an example of successful self-organisation of local communities. The research methodology is based on historical and analytical methods that allowed us to trace the European carnival traditions and determine the role and place of the studied problem in the general process of evolution of carnival culture. The structural method was used in the fact systematisation and presentation to document folk holiday entertainment’s common and distinctive features. The scientific novelty is that national culture requires developing and popularising carnival culture and democratic festive communication. Conclusions. The article states that the genetic ancestors of the European carnival are the Dionysius and Saturnalia ancient holidays. And the carnival became a mass folk holiday with street processions, games, theatrical performances in masks in the Middle Ages due to the development of self-governing European cities and the formation of the bourgeois class. The author has proved that the main idea of the carnival is an inversion — to change the age, gender, social status of the participants of the festive event. The way to a comprehensive knowledge of the international fund of carnival forms lies through studying its national variants. There is the genesis and historical transformation of the most popular European carnivals in the research. The European Carnival is the antithesis of a totalitarian holiday characterised by excessive seriousness, false pathos, and a stereotypical set of ideological slogans and clichés. The experience of carnival entertainment arrangement is interesting as an example of democratic festive communication, a bright artistic and aesthetic phenomenon, and successful self-organisation of local communities.