Description
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.
Features
ISBN:
9780520274631
Author:
Jon R. Snyder
Publisher:
JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.