Draws upon the language of cultural studies to investigate a contemporary hypothesis in the shifting ideological landscape of early modern Europe. This book traces the influence of Descartes from La Rochefoucauld and the communal spectacles of the Ancien Regime salon, to the Netherlands and Rembrandt's sketch, "Death of the Virgin".

Other articles in the collection examine anomie in Vatican frescoes by Giorgio Vasari, corporeal decay and the supernatural as spectacle on the early modern English stage, and affective self-perception and subjectivity in the scoring of Italian opera.