Persons and Portraits: Self in Early Modern Europe

Challenges the presumed supremacy of the "modern subject," the sovereign rational mind personified by Descartes. Rival theories of self in Machiavelli, Luther, Montaigne, Hobbes, Pascal, and Spinoza are explored alongside the richly embodied "persons" pictured in painting (Titian, Rembrandt, Velázquez), conduct literature (Castiglione, La Rochefoucauld), drama (Milton, Molière, Calderón), psychological fiction (La Fayette), and satiric prose (La Bruyére).