Running with the Bulls

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Irma Kiss Barath ('25), majoring in Comparative Literature and History of Art, investigated the use of images and symbols to describe the historical role of bullfighting through field and archival research in France under the mentorship of Prof. Jean-Michel Rabaté. This research was supported by the Pincus-Magaziner Family Undergraduate Research and Travel Fund.

This summer, I studied the visual iconography of the bullfight through a mix of fieldwork and archival research in France. Bullfighting is practiced in both France and Spain, but I chose to travel to France because I am already fluent in French and I assumed that this would make it easier to conduct my research.

My original hypothesis was that the bullfight originated as an early mode of figuration: an allegorical representation of man's confrontation with death. I had hoped to demonstrate this by analyzing its artistic representation in Goya and Picasso. I based this assumption largely on the account of Michel Leiris, a French anthropologist who frames the bullfight as a ritual that alleviates the spectator's anxiety about death. According to Leiris, the bullfight allows the spectator to identify with the matador and vicariously confront death. My hypothesis at this stage was that this confrontation of death is part and parcel of all creative expression. I also hoped to demonstrate that the bullfighting audience was actively intervening in a creative act (much like writing or painting).

I made continual revisions to my original hypothesis, scope of inquiry, and method. I discovered early on that my initial understanding of the historical origins of the bullfight was incorrect. By attending a bullfight live, I came to understand the spectator response. I had assumed that there was an inherent public component to the bullfight. In reality, the bullfight originated among the Spanish nobility and was slowly but surely diffused to the public. Contrary to what I thought, it was not originally a spectator sport. 

Above all, I learned that academic inquiry requires patience and repeated, deliberate effort. There are no easy answers – otherwise there would be no point to this kind of sustained inquiry! At times I felt discouraged, meandering as I did. There were more dead ends than I can count, more hours spent rereading the same impenetrable theory than I would proudly admit. The semiotician Algirdas Greimas will forever be a thorn in my side… But the sense of continual discovery was thrilling.

Independent research has been my single most rewarding experience at Penn, giving me the footing for an academic career I had never thought possible.

On the whole, I gained enormous flexibility in adapting to a foreign environment and academic culture. The entirety of my research project took place in France, from site visits to the Musée Goya in Castres, to the Museum of Taurine Culture in Nîmes, to archival work at the INHA Library in Paris. Throughout, I communicated with researchers and peers exclusively in French — the language of the vast majority of my academic sources. Reading Lacan in the original was certainly a challenge— but an enriching one, and one of many that gave me lasting confidence in my versatility as a thinker. Even my professional life has been drastically changed. My 3 months of language immersion prepared me to work as a freelance journalist around the globe. As I write this research summary, I’m in the midst of sourcing a feature story in Dakar, Senegal for an arts magazine based in London. - Irma Kiss Barath

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