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Research Networking Programme - Court residences as places of exchange in late medieval and early modern Europe - PALATIUM

Call for papers and call for posters. Making Space for Festival, 1400–1700 Interactions of Architecture and Performance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Festivals 21–24 March 2013 Venice, Italy.

The conference will consider how princely and civic architecture of the period, together with ephemeral architecture constructed for the occasion, have contributed to the implied meaning of a diverse series of festivals across Europe between approximately 1400 and 1700. Scholars have interpreted festivals as temporarily transformative, through visual and dramatic agency, of the political and social significance of great houses and palaces. They have argued further that perceptions of a city’s built
environment and princely houses were subject to idealising transformation as a result of ephemeral structures and performed actions during the occasion itself, and subsequently by means of festival books and other records. Festivals were notable occasions of social and political exchange affecting a city’s reputation, and the political and cultural relations of its sponsoring authorities. These matters were addressed through drawing together opinion formers, including princes and ambassadors of nations and city states, as well as visitors, from across a wide and diverse range of European localities.
Much work of a comparative and analytical nature remains to be done in assessing the impact of individual festivals, as well as the broad phenomenon of festival’s significance in the transnational environment, following on from pioneering studies by Jean Jacquot and his colleagues in the 1960s and 70s, furthered by subsequent scholarship.

For more details: http://www.courtresidences.eu