Crisi e orizzonti mitico-rituali in Ernesto De Martino. Dal Mondo magico alla Fine del mondo

This paper analyses Ernesto De Martino’s work on crisis, interpreting it on two levels: as a crisis of the self, and as a crisis of civilisation. Starting with De Martino’s first major work after his debut with Naturalismo e storicismo nell’etnologia (1941) and ending with his posthumously published, unfinished work The End of the World, this journey shows that crisis is a time of both risk and opportunity. Thanks to the protection provided by myth and ritual, new worlds can emerge from rupture. In the last De Martino, this occurrence is attributed to the ethos of transcendence in terms of the subject’s history, and to Europe in terms of civilisation’s history.