Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English en
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-05-28

Performing Spaces: Architecture, Spatiality, and Politics in European Ceremonial Cultures, circa 1550-1700

Objective

This project explores the uses of architecture, architectural imagery and symbolic space in the festive cultures of early modern Europe. Historians and social scientists have often connected changing notions of elite public and private spaces to discourses of centralisation and modernisation in differing European ancien regimes. Combining textual and historical evidence, visual sources, evidence from material culture, and sociological and critical theory, this study will explore the competing definitions of court spaces either as a fixed static entity or as a fluid and moveable space, and how these definitions are conceptualised, embodied, enacted, and represented in a range of festive cultural practices. The study contrasts representations of elite spaces and, in particular, architecture, architectural forms and discourses, in differing arenas such as court, the city, and the country, and in different regions and countries. Part of the evidence will be drawn from British examples, evaluating Jacobean and Caroline progresses alongside the more familiar court masques of the two reigns, and contrasting these with diasporic festive forms in Britain’s subaltern societies (Ireland, Isle of Man, Scotland, Wales). British exemplars will be contrasted with European festive cultures, especially those from the Low Countries and the German states. The study aims to develop a comparative and pan-European approach to interpreting festive cultures. One key aspect will be to explore the differing European approaches to centralisation and nation-state formation as one of the defining markers of modernity, an issue that retains its political resonance in modern Europe.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

This project has not yet been classified with EuroSciVoc.
Be the first one to suggest relevant scientific fields and help us improve our classification service

Keywords

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

MC-IEF - Intra-European Fellowships (IEF)

Coordinator

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK - NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, CORK
EU contribution
€ 177 305,94
Address
WESTERN ROAD
T12 YN60 Cork
Ireland
Region
Ireland Southern South-West
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
No data