Les charrettes festives en Provence rhodanienne. Variations d'un rite et de son espace de référence du XVIIIe au XXe siècle

Abstract

Duret (Evelyne). — The «festive carts» in Rhodanian Provence. Variations of a rite and of its reference domain from the XVIIIth to the XXth century. In the North-Western Bouches-du-Rhône, between the Alpilles and the rivers Rhône and Durance, in summer, hardly any Sunday passes without a festive cart rally taking place somewhere in the neighbourhood. Ail decked out in wild or farm-grown vegetables, drawn by several dozens of plough horses, those carts are unanimously seen as a defining element of the region. However, variations of the ritual in both time and space reveal, in more detail, fluctuatind feelings of collective identity. When they first appeared in the XVIIIth century, the festive carts were meant to repre-sent the most powerful class of farmers, but during the following century the revelries assumed political signifiance as well. Since the nineteen-fifties and sixties, the traditionalists have been doing their best to brush aside the ideological dissensions or the inter-communal enmities which still underlie the festive cart rallies. Whenever a change in context reorients a cart rally toward a new fonction, its old meanings are not for-gotten far ail that. Being an idéal carrier of complex symbolic systems, the festive cart is a sort of prism reflecting a multi faceted identity. Le Monde Alpin et rhodanien, ler-2 trimestres 1993, L'identité vécue. Discours, rites, emblèmes, pp. 35 à 61.