The Baroque Mind

Consisting of ten chapters and four appendices, this new book entitled ‘The Baroque Mind’ presents the reader with a universe of the mental attitudes of diverse Baroque personae towards a wide variety of themes, to better understand the ‘spirit’ of the Baroque age. Based on selected extracts, chosen from the written evidence of a wide cross section of men and women living in the Baroque age, this book written by the Director of the International Institute for Baroque Studies, Professor Denis De Lucca, reproduces and discusses numerous writings that reflect the mentality of people living in the Baroque age.
The themes of this book include religious reform and spirituality, political, military and civic affairs, philosophy, aesthetics, science, medicine, the love of theatrical spectacle, literary achievement and repeated evocations of past grandeur. The world of the late sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is presented as a colourful but double-faced cultural episode in the history of humanity that is described as having been reformist and spiritual; violent and intolerant; urban and urbane; theatrical, passionate, sensual, and overpowered by fierce emotions – emotions that would have been unleashed during the frequent celebrations of important events and important discoveries.