Sicilian Epic and the Marionette Theater

<p> This study analyzes the folkloric genres that comprise the repertoire of the marionette theater in Sicily. Here epic farce saints' lives bandits' lives fairytales Christian myth and city legend offer the vehicles by which puppeteers comment upon critique--perhaps even negotiate--the relationships among the major classes of Sicilian society: the aristocracy the people the clergy and the Mafia. The lynchpin of the repertoire is the Carolingian Cycle and in particular a contemporary version of <I>The Song of Roland<I> known in Sicily as <I>The Death of the Paladins</I> a text which illustrates the means by which the Carolingian heroes--Charlemagne Roland Renaud Ganelon and Angelica--augment saints bandits Biblical figures and Sicilian folk heroes to provide the marionette theater its rhetorical function: the articulation and dissemination of the tools of Sicilian identity.</p>