Baroque, Venice, Thetare, Philosophy

Book: Baroque, Venice, Thetare, Philosophy
Written by: Will Daddario
Published by: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Will Daddario’s ‘Baroque, Venice, Theatre, Philosophy’ presents a meticulous study and exploration of the Italian baroque, examining its historical context in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well as its architectural and metaphorical significance. The book examines the political and aesthetic networks of early modern Venice, emphasizing the role of theatre in shaping subjectivity and allegiances. It draws on various performance practices from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to reconceptualize the baroque as a collection of social practices aimed at developing specific subject positions. To nuance his points, Daddario draws on a range of theorists including Leibniz, Deleuze, Adorno, Barthes, de Certeau, Derrida, Zizek, and Foucault.

The book is devised into two parts. The first section, ‘Baroque Pastoral’ establishes and prepares the ground for an historico- philosophical analysis in order to offer an interpretation of historically specific performance practices in Venice, prevalent during the early seventeenth century. “Sprouting from Leibniz’s baroque fantasy of the world as an enfoldment of gardens within gardens, this part offers a reading of Valsanzibio, the allegorical botanical masterpiece designed by Luigi Bernini in the hills of Padua, and Bomarzo, a phantasmagorical garden of delights planned by Vicino Orsini outside of Rome” (p.14). The second part develops the idea of a Jesuit theatre of the world through careful consideration of the work of Giovanni Domenico, Ottonelli’s treatise on theatre space, the dialectical pair of the Jesuit order and Ruzzante, and so on.

“I use the term “baroque pastoral”to connote firstly a meeting place of imagination and natural environment, arranged and undertaken for the purpose of perfecting one’ s material and spiritual existence; and, secondly, a particular labor of distilling the core of nature’ s beauty while simultaneously attempting to discard nature’ s outer, chaotic exterior.” (p23)