McGowan, Margaret M. Harmony in the Universe: Spectacle and the Quest for Peace in the Early Modern Period. Turnhout: Brepols, 2026.


Abstract:
This book is, sadly, a posthumous publication. It is the author’s last work and offers a new approach to the study of Peace in early modern Europe. It explores the creations made by artists, poets, composers, and choreographers for festivals performed at court and in the cities of Europe which were specifically designed to make players and spectators aware of the significance of Peace, and to move them to actions which helped to guarantee its duration. Created in the context of war, these festivals were based on a conception of a world made up of harmony and controlled by an interplay between order and disorder. This view of the universe influenced writers in their opinions of political structures and diplomatic strategies for which festivals played an important role. Politics and spectacle are shown here to be mutually reinforcing, for ballets, intermezzi, masquerades, choral performances, and princely entries, while recognizing the potency of war, allsought to establish concord, and to bring civic unity to countries devastated by conflict. In spectacle, the Quest for Peace is complex, frail, yet rich in invention.