Festivals in Focus

The proliferation of festivals across the world has given birth to a new academic field: festival studies. Before his premature death Dragan Klaic was the greatest early authority of this discipline. Festivals in Focus contains the last essays which Klaic composed with the aim of serving as introductory chapters to a (forthcoming) collected volume on festivals. Nevertheless these four essays are complete also on their own, displaying the author s sharp critical ability and raising many interesting questions about cultural festivals not just in Europe but in a global context. Besides the historical evolution of festivals, their types, contents and settings are discussed in the four chapters. The writing about the future of festivals by Bernard Faivre d Acier, the former long-time director of the trend-setting artistic celebration, the Festival d Avignon complements Klaic s essays.