| This thesis explores the centuries-old popular custom of adorning crosses each May in Granada, Spain. The practice derives from ancient European spring rites, Christianized and re-centered on the Holy Cross. It also reflects a rich heritage of lavish, ephemeral Baroque festival adornment. Today, in addition to their traditional spiritual and aesthetic ends, Granadine May Crosses are important statements of urban identity.;The goal of this thesis is to demonstrate how meaning is assembled and conveyed on May Crosses along with the beautiful objects that adorn them and backdrops that frame them. My methods included archival and art historical research on the custom; interviews with experienced May Cross adorners; participation in mounting a Cross; and efforts to discover, in all social contexts, the significance of the two principal classes of May Cross adornments. Tracing the "social lives" of these things reveals that nowadays, when granadinos put domestic objects on the Cross, they evoke old-fashioned domestic life and the sociable, female spaces of the home. When they create monumental backdrops for the Cross, they connect themselves with the public, male spaces of Granada's historic city center. In Granadine May Crosses the residents of a large, modern city reunite increasingly dispersed places, recollect meaningful history, reaffirm their connections with one another, and rearticulate their place in Granada. |
