Gods of play
Subtitle: baroque festive performances as rhetorical discourse
By: Kristiaan P. Aercke.
Series: SUNY series, the margins of literature
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Albany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 284
Subjects: Theater -- Europe -- History -- 17th century; Theater -- Semiotics; Europe -- Court and courtiers
Description: Gods of Play studies the close connections between politics, culture, art, and philosophy in seventeenth-century Europe. As an emblem of this interrelationship, the author has chosen the phenomenon of the "splendid festive performance" of spectacular plays and operas given at absolutist courts in Rome, Madrid, Paris, Versailles, and Vienna between 1631 and 1668.

Gods of Play fills voids in the scholarly literature on the seventeenth-century, on absolutism, on courtly theatricality, and on the philosophy of play. Aercke demonstrates that such splendid performances were not just frivolous entertainment for the courtly class but were serious activities with far-ranging political consequences.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-270) and index.