Corporeality and Performativity in Baroque Naples takes readers to a captivating Italian destination, while tracing new thought-provoking routes connecting this seventeenth-century Mediterranean city to current theoretical perspectives. Philosophy, folktales, science, esotericism, visual and literary languages intermix in this volume of collected essays, allowing readers to appreciate the corporeal tradition of the Neapolitan Baroque and its rich cultural heritage.

Danila Cannamela, University of St. Thomas

Alessandro Giardino has gathered together several fascinating and well-documented essays by scholars interested in the connection between the Baroque and the city of Naples. Ranging from Caravaggio to Matteo Garrone, from Giordano Bruno to Giambattista Basile, Corporeality and Performativity in Baroque Naples offers an interdisciplinary and compelling perspective on Naples as a cultural space through the prism of the body. Equally thought-provoking is its insistence on the popular notion of ‘the body of Naples’ regarded as a visual, sexual, and urban metaphor. This volume will be of great interest to readers concerned with the particular baroque aesthetic that characterizes all Neapolitan cultural expressions.

Gian-Maria Annovi, University of Southern California