REPRESENTATION AND ANTICIPATION IN RITUAL DRAMA: Examples from medieval Europe and modern Africa.

The article seeks to develop a theoretical framework for interpreting social rituals and the notion of social and cultural imitation, specifically concerning the connections between religion, religious rituals and liturgy, and society. It draws on theories and scholarship from the fields of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology, social theory, and history. The model is developed with illustrative examples of Europe in the Middle Ages, especially reforms of religious practice and liturgy in the Carolingian Empire and the religious movement of the Cathars, and Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially the Zulu-Christian syncretistic religious groups of the Nazareth Baptist Church of South Africa and the Church of Saints.