On September 18, the Royal Historical Society hosts a virtual lecture by Simon Ditchfield, professor of history and director of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies (CREMS) at the University of York. Ditchfield’s remarks are entitled “Baroque around the clock: Daniello Bartoli SJ (1608-1685) and the uses of global history.”
According to the RHS, Ditchfield will consider how “right from the start the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) realised the value and role of ‘local colour’ in the persuasive rhetoric of Jesuit missionary accounts.” His lecture will use the works of Bartoli to show how Jesuit historians “played an important role in giving their Jesuit readers a sense of the distinctiveness of their global mission.”
Advanced registration is required. Further information appears below and is available at the RHS website.
Baroque around the clock: Daniello Bartoli SJ (1608-1685) and the uses of global history
Professor Simon Ditchfield
18 September 2020
Live Online via Zoom
Booking Required
Abstract
‘Something should be written regarding the cosmography of those regions where ours live’ (Ignatius Loyola).
As this quotation indicates, right from the start the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) realised the value and role of ‘local colour’ in the persuasive rhetoric of Jesuit missionary accounts. Over a century later, when Jesuit missions were to be found on all the inhabited continents of the world then known to Europeans, descriptions of these new found lands were to be read for the entertainment as well as the edification of their Old World audiences. Bartoli’s volumes also played an important role in giving their Jesuit readers a sense of the distinctiveness of their global mission. Referred to by Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) as the ‘Dante of baroque prose’, Bartoli developed a particularly variegated and capacious idiom to meet the challenge of discovering how to describe the world.
Lecture Timetable
17.45 – Zoom Waiting Room opens
18.00 – Welcome and Lecture
18.50 – Break
19.00 – Questions
19.30 – Close