To Embody the Marvellous: The Making of Illusions in Early Modern Spain

To Embody the Marvelous explores puppetry and animation as performative media of choice for mastering the art of illusion, engaging with early modern notions of wonder in religious, artistic, and social contexts. Historical and fictional artifacts reenvisioned religious, artistic, and social notions, leading to a paradigm shift in belief systems governed by reason. Puppets, automata, and mechanical stage props deployed a rationalized sense of wonder that illustrates the relationship between faith and reason, reevaluates the boundaries of fiction, acknowledges the rise of science and technology, and questions normative authority.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 15 July 2021
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press

To Embody the Marvelous delves into puppetry and animation as the performative mediums of choice for mastering the art of illusion, engaging with early modern notions of wonder in religious, artistic, and social contexts. From the jointed, wood-carved figures of Christ to saintly marionettes that performed hagiographical dramas, experimental puppets and automata in Cervantes' Don Quixote, and the mechanical sets around which playwright Calderón de la Barca devised secular magic shows to deconstruct superstitions, these historical and fictional artifacts reimagined religious, artistic, and social notions that shaped early modern society's critical engagement with enchantment and disenchantment.

The use of animated performance objects in Spanish theatrical contexts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries emerged as one of the most effective pedagogical tools to engage with civil society. Regardless of social strata, readers and spectators alike were caught up in a paradigm shift wherein belief systems were increasingly governed by reason, even though the discursive primacy of supernatural doxa and Christian wonder remained firmly entrenched. Thanks to their potential for motion, religious and profane puppets, automata, and mechanical stage props deployed a rationalized sense of wonder that illustrates the relationship between faith and reason, reevaluates the boundaries of fiction in art and entertainment cultures, acknowledges the rise of science and technology, and questions normative authority.

Weight: 418g
Dimension: 152 x 229 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780826501790