Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe
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16th century
17th century
A01=Jon R. Snyder
affairs
aristocracy
Author_Jon R. Snyder
canonical writing
Category=RG
commoners
communication
controversy
court writings
culture of secrecy
disguise
dishonesty
dissimulation
early modern europe
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
europe
inner lives
italy
masking emotions
modern history
moral philosophy
naples
netherlands
philosophers
political silence
political theory
private lives
rene descartes
secrecy
secret thoughts
textbooks
treatises
visual arts
writers and intellectuals
Product details
- ISBN 9780520228191
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 19 Aug 2009
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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'Larvatus prodeo', announced Rene Descartes at the beginning of the seventeenth century: 'I come forward, masked'. Deliberately disguising or silencing their most intimate thoughts and emotions, many early modern Europeans besides Descartes-princes, courtiers, aristocrats and commoners alike-chose to practice the shadowy art of dissimulation. For men and women who could not risk revealing their inner lives to those around them, this art of incommunicativity was crucial, both personally and politically. Many writers and intellectuals sought to explain, expose, justify, or condemn the emergence of this new culture of secrecy, and from Naples to the Netherlands controversy swirled for two centuries around the powers and limits of dissimulation, whether in affairs of state or affairs of the heart. This beautifully written work crisscrosses Europe, with a special focus on Italy, to explore attitudes toward the art of dissimulation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Discussing many canonical and lesser-known works, Jon R.
Snyder examines the treatment of dissimulation in early modern treatises and writings on the court, civility, moral philosophy, political theory, and in the visual arts.
Jon R. Snyder is Professor of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has most recently published a bilingual edition of G.B. Andreini's 1622 comedy, Love in the Mirror, as well as a book on Baroque aesthetics, L'estetica del Barocco.
