pastorela means A traditional Mexican theater performance that chronicles the journeys of shepherds and shepherdesses on the way to visit the newborn Jesus, typically performed during Advent. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 91 out of 100.
Why this word is great
PASTORELA — [Noun] A traditional Mexican nativity play, or a genre of medieval Occitan lyric poetry, both dramatizing the encounter of a knight or rustic shepherds with a shepherdess, blending pastoral and religious themes. Borrowed from Spanish pastorela, from French pastourelle, a diminutive of Old French pastoure ("shepherdess"). Unlike the courtly "pastourelle" (a specific Old French lyric of amorous debate) or the doctrinal "auto sacramental" (an allegorical Eucharist play), the pastorela is a folk enactment, a humble procession toward epiphany. It is the scent of copal incense and damp wool in a village plaza, the comic stumble of a devil costumed in borrowed rags, and the shepherds' awe-struck faces lit by a single candle representing the star—a testament to how the profound must always be clothed in the particular and the poor.
noun
- A traditional Mexican theater performance that chronicles the journeys of shepherds and shepherdesses on the way to visit the newborn Jesus, typically performed during Advent.
- A type of Occitan lyric poetry in which a knight meets a shepherdess.
- A type of Occitan lyric poetry in which a knight meets a shepherdess.; A work of such poetry.