The Early Modern Stage between Baroque and Enlightenment: Vondel’s Century

Recent years have seen the study of early modern theatre cultures turn towards the transnational and global. The long and prolific career of Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679) as a poet, translator and man of the stage offers opportunities for considering the interconnections between different European traditions and their material and intellectual connections to a globalizing world of economic expansion, emergent colonial empires, and missionary networks.

Linking stage traditions and reading authors and traditions across national boundaries and against the grain will shed new light on critical problems concerning the European and global Baroque and the connections between classicism, Restoration and early Enlightenment.

This conference seeks to encourage a dialogue between early modern scholars from different disciplines including literary history, art history, theatre studies and intellectual history, and different intellectual traditions.

Contributions directly on Vondel, although encouraged, are in this respect not a formal requirement. The organisers particularly welcome papers shaped by new critical and theoretical approaches, such as early modern critical race studies, queer- and trans studies and the environmental and spatial humanities.

• Register for the event
• Download the Vondel conference programme (PDF , 125kb)