Secrecy and Dissimulation in Early Modern Europe: Interview with Jon Snyder

Sarah Luehrman Axelrod (Harvard University, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures) interviews Professor Jon Snyder (University of California-Santa Barbara) about his book "Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe" (University of California Press, 2009). Deliberately disguising or silencing their most intimate thoughts and emotions, many early modern Europeans besides Descartes-princes, courtiers, aristocrats and commoners alike-chose to practice the shadowy art of dissimulation. For men and women who could not risk revealing their inner lives to those around them, this art of incommunicativity was crucial, both personally and politically. An event of the De Bosis Colloquium in Italian Studies, Harvard University.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Jon Snyder
• Sarah Luehrman
• dissimulation
• Italian Renaissance
• culture of secrecy
• disguising emotions
• early modern Europe
• Italy
• conduct
• behavior