Carne Vale Again: A Catholic Muses on Trinidad Carnival, Female Flesh and Incarnation".* 1

Introduction Carnival is a Euro-Christian festival with roots in Dionysian revelry. As a religious festival it was important for preparing for the observation of Lent. Lent is a time of fasting to deepen the individual Christian’s spirituality; it is a time of penance and almsgiving set up to remind Catholic Christians of “the need for acts of penance to serve as punishment for sins and acts of charity to make up for them. Basically the idea is to do good things to balance out all of the bad, as well as avoiding more bad things” (Johnson 1994, 50). Etymologically, carnival derives from carnevale (Italian) and carne-le-vare (Latin)—the removal of meat or “goodbye to flesh”. Of course, it is more than the eating of meat that is in question; the indulgence in physical activities that gratify the body’s desires, of which sex seems to be the most troubling, is also encapsulated in carnevale. Medieval Carnival therefore was a festival of physical abandonment—unlimited eating,