About this item
Highlights
- Relics, dreams, voyages is a closely focused sequence of studies of worldwide connections in all the arts in the baroque period.
- About the Author: Peter Davidson is Senior Research Fellow of Campion Hall, University of Oxford
- 320 Pages
- Literary Criticism, Modern
Description
About the Book
This book presents a wide-ranging and original meditation on cartographies of connection in all the arts of the baroque period.Book Synopsis
Relics, dreams, voyages is a closely focused sequence of studies of worldwide connections in all the arts in the baroque period. Drawing on original research in libraries, collections, and archives in five countries, and in as many languages, this book draws many astonishing, unfamiliar and beautiful texts, things and events, into a cartography of the secret and strange patterns of baroque cultures worldwide. The visual arts are examined across a wide temporal and geographical span, and many subversive iconographies are decoded: at the French and English courts, in remote Scotland, in Nagasaki, in Valladolid. This books offers a new, extraordinary cultural geography of the baroque world, opening doors to many rich and strange cultural artefacts, from 'China to Peru.'From the Back Cover
Relics, dreams, voyages conjures a new cultural map of the early-modern world and offers a new, extraordinary cultural geography of the baroque world, opening doors to many rich and strange cultural artefacts, from 'China to Peru'.
The overriding theme is centre and periphery, in particular centres of baroque culture outside the mainstream. The book meditates on cultural transmission from Asia and the Americas to Europe, with many of the essays considering the secretive cultures of exiled or persecuted British Roman Catholics, including the pseudo-relics constructed in Antwerp for the posthumous cult of Mary Queen of Scots and the triumphal procession of a vandalised statue at the exiled English College in Valladolid. The visual arts are examined across a wide temporal and geographical span, and many subversive iconographies are decoded: at the French and English courts, in remote Scotland, in Nagasaki, in Valladolid. Drawing on original research in libraries, collections, and archives in five countries, and in as many languages, this book considers many astonishing, unfamiliar and beautiful texts, things and events, into a cartography of the subtle, and sometimes secret, patterns of baroque culture worldwide.Review Quotes
'Davidson is one of the most diversely learned scholars writing today. His global scholarship connects exiles and visionaries across continents, centuries, languages and religions. To read is to explore unfamiliar libraries and secret gardens. With astonishing erudition and warm sympathy, Davidson reveals submerged codes and contexts that have kept major works half hidden. Exceptionally lucid on matters of great complexity, these essays gleam among the shadows of dangerous and defiant arts.'
--Prof Alexandra Harris, author of Weatherland, The Rising Down
--Sir Noel Malcolm, All Souls College, Oxford 'The fine threads and variegated colors of this bright tapestry of case studies combine in considerable luxury to make a resounding case for a universal "Catholic Baroque" that encompassed centuries and crossed the ocean seas.'
--Earle Havens, Director of the Stern Center for the History of the Book, Johns Hopkins University
About the Author
Peter Davidson is Senior Research Fellow of Campion Hall, University of Oxford