Carnival - pre-Lenten reversal ritual

743

Recurring pre-Lenten festive season described as a reversal ritual in which social roles are inverted and norms about desired behaviour are suspended, analysed by Bakhtin as 'uncrowning' through the grotesque body. The earliest specific date available is 743, when the Synod of Leptines condemned Carnival excesses, an attestation of existing practice, not an origin. Historian John Bossy holds there is no evidence much before 1200; the origin is genuinely unsettled.