From Baroque allegory to romantic sublime: Writing, images, and subjectivity in Tesauro, Vico, Novalis

In this dissertation I argue that, from the Baroque allegory to the Romantic sublime, the formation of hybrid strategies of representation based on the interplay of words and images determine a new idea of the reader as a poetic and textual construction. The subject of the work of art is no longer placed outside, but inscribed within the work itself. This new position of the reader implies a transformation of the modalities of reception of both images and words. I consider the crisis of the institute of allegory in the 17th century as the point of departure for the formation of such hybrid languages and I illustrate how they contribute to design a new image of the modern reader. In the first chapter, I analyze the structure of the Baroque allegory in paintings, poetry, and in treatises on art. I focus on the emergence of a new sensibility toward the role played by the subject in the appreciation of the work of art. I argue that the theory of conceit, especially in the form of imprese and family crests, is a direct response to the crisis of the classical institution of allegory. In the second chapter I propose a reading of Giambattista Vico's New Science as a journey of aesthetic education of the subject from the Baroque conceit to a pre-romantic idea of sublime. In the third chapter I argue that the Romantic sublime is the evolution of the problematic relationship between conceit and allegory. I focus on Novalis' novel Heinrich Von Ofterdingen that I regard as the attempt to turn the experience of the sublime into a textual experience. In synthesis, my dissertation traces the development of a new rhetoric of subjectivity from Baroque allegory to Romantic sublime. My analysis is focused on figures of speech, narrative structures, and visual representations. The goal is not to create an authoritative interpretation of three centuries of cultural history, but rather to present indicative cases of works that blend the critical borders of categories such as allegory and sublime that have so far not been considered as contiguous to each other.