The Theater of Truth : The Ideology of (Neo)Baroque Aesthetics

__The Theater of Truth__ argues that seventeenth-century baroque and twentieth-century neobaroque aesthetics have to be understood as part of the same complex. The Neobaroque, rather than being a return to the stylistic practices of a particular time and place, should be described as the continuation of a cultural strategy produced as a response to a specific problem of thought that has beset Europe and the colonial world since early modernity. This problem, in its simplest philosophical form, concerns the paradoxical relation between appearances and what they represent. Egginton explores expressions of this problem in the art and literature of the Hispanic Baroques, new and old. He shows how the strategies of these two Baroques emerged in the political and social world of the Spanish Empire, and how they continue to be deployed in the cultural politics of the present. Further, he offers a unified theory for the relation between the two Baroques and a new vocabulary for distinguishing between their ideological values. Contents 10 Introduction: The Baroque as a Problem of Thought 14 1. Of Baroque Holes and Baroque Folds 24 2. How to Build a Baroque House (Cervantes, Master Architect) 39 3. The Theater of Truth 52 4. The Opacity of Language and the Transparency of Being: On Góngora’s Poetics 69 5. The Corporeal Image and the New World Baroque 82 6. The Dream Life of Calderón and Borges 98 7. The World Well Dressed: The Later Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar 120 Epilogue: A New Distinction 140 Notes 144 Works Cited 162 Index 176 0804769540,9780804769549 Stanford University Press The Theater of Truth is a book for those interested and engaged in the debates around baroque and neobaroque aesthetics, and offers a unified theory for the relation between these terms and a new vocabulary for distinguishing between their ideological values This work argues that 17th-century baroque and 20th-century neobaroque aesthetics have to be understood as part of the same complex. The author explores expressions of this problem in the art and literature of the Hispanic baroques, new and old