Society for German Renaissance and Baroque Literature (SGRABL)

Topic: The Politics of Splendor
(German Literature, Cultural Studies, History)

We invite innovative contributions on the political and social implications of “splendor” in literary and cultural artifacts in the Early Modern period. Papers on the importance of the visual display of power as well as on the power of the word are welcome. Papers may focus on specific writers or works, take a thematic approach or focus on theoretical approaches to the deployment of power (Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault etc.).

Papers could focus on:

• Festkultur
• The politics of fashion
• The cultural politics of display in the natural history cabinet
• The Splendor of the illustration in the book
• The relevance of the physical appearance of the book
• The theater of splendor
• The staging of splendor and power in the baroque tragedy
• Splendor in the garden
• Visual and textual representation of the splendid city
• Rhetoric and the construction and deployment of verbal splendor
• The splendor of the exotic