Reading Log Week 8: Danger! Charivaris

Allan Greer, “From Folklore to Revolution: Charivaris and the Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837” Social History 15:1 (1990).

Susanna Moodie, Roughing it in the bush, or, life in Canada,
edited by Carl Ballstadt, Ottawa, 1988.

 

From Folklore to Revolution: Charivaris and the Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837

  • Use of historical stories examples, his own opinion and modern slang made the article more interesting and relatable

“it would be a mistake in my view to regard it as simply a throwback.”[1]

  • Shows similarities and differences between Lower Canada’s French-Canadians to Renaissance France. Not strictly an article on lower Canada and this broadens readers understanding of charivari.

“In Canada charivari always followed a ‘mismatched’ wedding. One with a large age difference or one which involved a person who had been previously married.”[2]

“In Renaissance France charivaris were commonly work of village youth societies and directed specifically against mature widowers or outsiders who deprive local young en of a particular mate”.[3]

  • It stated that they had a “punitive procedure” of humility and monetary extraction and that these “two penal techniques [were] favored by the church and criminal courts of the period.”[4]

-I find this aspect to be ironic because nowadays you would never see a church penalizing its people in such a way. It’s also odd that they would dress up and use objects such as coffins as part of this.

  • It spoke of these penalties as “reintegrating ‘deviants’ rather than expelling them.”[5]

-We see this in society today because we do not kill people for their wrongs anymore, rather reintegrate them back into society and many people will personally speak on these matter to reach out to other people who might be getting involved in similar things.

  • The way Greer built on the growth of charivari from the past to present was a little confusing at times. A clear definition of charivari to begin with would have been very helpful.
  • How he related this to modern activities such as riots; this concept made everything clearer and made the word ‘rebellion’ in the title make sense. This example made me think of charivari as a gang.
  • It said Lower Canada used mostly money for penalties, split 50/50 between the poor/charity and the participants, to pay for expenses (celebratory drinks in tavern)[6]

-the fact he added the parenthesis made me laugh, it added humor to the article. I also found it interesting how Renaissance France would use the humiliation penalty most and Canada preferred money. I think it speaks a lot for the types of countries we were, maybe Lower Canada needed the money or were they simply less cruel?

 

Roughing it in the bush, or, life in Canada

  • Explains exactly what charivari is which makes the rest of the article make sense, “what is a charivari”[7] and then expands on that by storytelling
  • Story-like style makes the article interesting and relatable
  • Use of word “wild boys”[8] describes the people involved well and using terms that we can relate to and create a picture of
  • Not having references questions reliability and the characters are not identified specifically which questions if this bias
  • This article does a better job in explaining what the other article tried to

[1] Allan Greer, “From Folklore to Revolution: Charivaris and the Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837” Social History 15:1 (1990), pp. 27.

[2] Greer, “From Folklore to Revolution: Charivaris and the Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837” pp. 28.

[3] IBID

[4] Greer, “From Folklore to Revolution: Charivaris and the Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837” pp. 30.

[5] Greer, “From Folklore to Revolution: Charivaris and the Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837” pp.32.

[6] IBID

 

[7] Susanna Moodie, Roughing it in the bush, or, life in Canada,
edited by Carl Ballstadt, Ottawa, 1988, p.221.

[8] Susanna Moodie, Roughing it in the bush, or, life in Canada,
edited by Carl Ballstadt, Ottawa, 1988, p.222.