Pruning and propagating civic behaviour
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_C0061
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Architecture, Festival and the City
- Publisher
- Routledge
- ISBN
- 9781138362345
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
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- Research group(s)
-
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- The paper examines three processions taking place in Mantua within approximately three years (1495–1497), during the marquisate of Francesco II Gonzaga. It considers the reasons for, and nature of, each celebration, and how relics, artworks, buildings and ephemera functioned. The chapter draws out the local socio-political significance of the processions, which had not previously been analysed in relation to each other. While the Mantuan celebrations broadly correspond with renaissance rituals elsewhere in Italy, each of the three ‘feste’ examined here is found to be quite distinct in terms of intention, occasion and route, and could differ in its effects, intended or otherwise, on the populace. Equivalences are drawn in the paper between people’s behaviour in late-quattrocento Mantua and that observed by Elias Canetti in his psychopathological study, <Crowds and Power> (1960). A chapter in an edited volume, this presents the earliest case study within an international survey of architecture, festival and the city through time.
The volume takes its place amongst a burgeoning literature on rituals, to show their fundamental importance in social relations and on the urban fabric. In renaissance studies, attention is usually focused on Rome, Florence and Venice; this paper draws attention to the small but geographically critical location of Mantua. It demonstrates how élites could co-opt holy days for local politics and, conversely, how the populace could use festivals to register dissent; processions were thus arenas of political agency at either end of the spectrum.
This is a micro-historical examination of a three-year period within a specific locale and political context, in the light of scholarship on the relationship between ‘popolani’ and elites in early-modern European ritual. Methodology included site visits to Mantua, allowing textual analysis of primary-source accounts of the occasions, mapping out/walking of the routes, and inspection of extant buildings.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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