Böll, Heinrich | Yvonne Holbeche (essay date 1985)
Yvonne Holbeche (essay date 1985)
SOURCE: "Carnival in Cologne: A Reading of Heinrich Böll's Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum" in AUMLA, No. 63, May, 1985, pp. 33-42.
[In the following essay, Holbeche explores the significance of the carnival in Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum.]
Criticism of Heinrich Böll's Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum has only briefly addressed the question of the significance of the carnival which provides such a suggestive backdrop to this melodramatic tale. Traditionally a period of gaiety and frivolity preceding Lent, whose origins, although still a subject of some dispute, can be traced to ancient Greek, Roman, Germanic and Celtic mid-winter and spring festivals and fertility cults, the carnival has long been celebrated with processions and parades, masquerades and street threatre. For a brief period of time the social order is turned upside down as the donning of masks or...
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