Senior Seminar

European cultures of the 16th and 17th centuries have been obsessed with the power of images and imagination, of figures and figuration. Poetic practices of mirroring, linking, and folding are at the center of this culture of the imagination that in recent years has often been compared to forms in which images and texts are used in cyberspace. The seminar will deal with this topic from different angles. First, we will discuss rhetorical theories of the power of images and some theoretical approaches to baroque literature. Then we will analyze texts and images from the early modern period, especially visionary texts, baroque theater, poetry, and the art of emblems. Based on this and on the individual projects of the participants, we will investigate analogous structures of the uses of images and texts in cyberspace. This will include the question of how pre-enlightenment uses of images might help to understand postmodern imagination and the production of virtual worlds.