Patrizia Bettella

Eugenio Refini. Staging the Soul: Allegorical Drama as Spiritual Practice in Baroque Italy

Introduction

Eugenio refini. Staging the soul: allegorical drama as spiritual practice in baroque italy. Explore Baroque Italian allegorical drama as a spiritual practice. Eugenio Refini's "Staging the Soul" reveals how theater shaped spiritual life in 17th-century Italy.

Abstract

Review

The title "Staging the Soul: Allegorical Drama as Spiritual Practice in Baroque Italy" immediately signals an ambitious and interdisciplinary study by Eugenio Refini. The work proposes to delve into the profound, often overlooked, spiritual dimensions of allegorical drama in 17th-century Italy. By framing this dramatic form as a "spiritual practice," the title suggests a move beyond traditional theatrical analysis, aiming instead to uncover how performances served as a means of moral instruction, self-reflection, or religious contemplation for both performers and audiences. This perspective promises to shed new light on the cultural and religious landscape of Baroque Italy, where the boundaries between art, religion, and daily life were frequently permeable. Given the absence of an abstract, we can infer that a key strength of Refini's work would lie in its potential to challenge conventional understandings of Baroque theater, emphasizing its functional role in the spiritual lives of individuals and communities. The phrase "staging the soul" implies an exploration of how inner moral and theological struggles were externalized and made intelligible through dramatic representation, likely involving personifications of virtues, vices, or abstract concepts central to Catholic theology of the Counter-Reformation era. This approach would necessitate a nuanced engagement with primary sources, including play texts, theological treatises, and performance records, offering a rich re-evaluation of the period's cultural production and its inherent didactic and devotional purposes. While a comprehensive assessment is hindered by the lack of an abstract, one might anticipate the work to thoroughly delineate the specific mechanisms through which allegorical drama functioned as spiritual practice. Questions might arise concerning the differentiation of these practices across various contexts (e.g., court, ecclesiastical, public theaters) and the varied reception by different audiences. Nevertheless, the title alone suggests a highly significant contribution to the fields of early modern performance studies, Italian literary history, and religious studies. Refini's work appears poised to recontextualize Baroque drama, highlighting its profound engagement with the spiritual concerns of its time and encouraging a re-evaluation of the expressive and instrumental power of theater.

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