Culture And Authority in the Baroque

by Ciavolella, Massimo; Coleman, Patrick

• ISBN13: 9780802038388
• ISBN10: 0802038387
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-11-30
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

The cultural forms often referred to as 'baroque' are the most spectacular expressions of early modern Europe's effort to mediate between knowledge and power at a time when political authority of religion undermined by the division of Christianity, and science and poetry were seen increasingly as rival forms of intellectual authority. Culture and Authority in the Baroque explores the baroque across a wide range of disciplines, from poetics to politics, to the rituals of musical, dramatic, and religious performance. The essays in this collection span what has been called the 'baroque crescent' stretching from Spain through Italy to Russia, but they also bring Shakespeare and English cosmological poetry into productive dialogue with continental Europe in the reinterpretation of baroque world-views. The editors, Massimo Ciavolella and Patrick Coleman, along with a group of eminent scholars from across the disciplinary and geographic spectrum, investigate baroque modes of persuasion with careful attention to the complexity of particular cultural phenomena and their political and aesthetic implications. This collection redefines the way the baroque will be understood.

Table of Contents

Introduction	3	(190)
MASSIMO CIAVOLELLA AND PATRICK COLEMAN
1 'Believing and Not Believing': Shakespeare and the Archaeology of Wonder	12	(18)
PETER G. PLATT
2 Philosophical Tours of the Universe in British Poetry, 1700-1729, Or, The Soaring Muse	30	(33)
LORNA CLYMER
3 Marino and the Meraviglia	63	(10)
PAOLO CHERCHI
4 I Would Rather Drown, Than Not Find New Worlds	73	(12)
PAOLO FASOLI
5 Truth and Wonder in Naples circa 1640	85	(21)
JON R. SNYDER
6 Tarticolar gusto e diletto alle orecchie': Listening in the Early Seicento	106	(16)
ANDREW DELL'ANTONIO
7 From Liturgy to Literature: Prayer and Play in the Early Russian Baroque	122	(16)
RONALD VROON
8 Reconciling Divine and Political Authority in Racine's Esther	138	(21)
ANN DELEHANTY
9 Apostles and Apostates: The Court of Peter the Great as a Chivalrous Religious Order	159	(34)
ERNEST A. ZITSER
10 Self-Knowledge and the Advantages of Concealment: Pierre Nicole's 'On Self-Knowledge'	193	(15)
JOHN D. LYONS
11 The Baroque Social Bond in the Memoirs of the Cardinal de Retz	208	(21)
MALINA STEFANOVSKA
12 A Different Kind of Wonder? Women's Writing in Early Modern Spain	229	(16)
LISA VOLLENDORF
Contributors	245	(4)
Index	249