Sublime: The Baroque Masque and the Politics of Seduction

This chapter turns to Stuart court masques to examine the political uses of the baroque in early modern England. Distinct from Enlightenment or Longinian approaches to the sublime, the baroque sublime flourished in England during the promotion of the Divine Right of Kings under the Stuart monarchs. As self-proclaimed gods on earth, James I and Charles I relied on a uniquely baroque conception of the sublime to communicate their divinity, and the court masque proved ideal for this purpose. By examining the stage designs of Inigo Jones alongside the poetry of Ben Jonson and William Davenant, the chapter argues that the Stuart kings used the baroque in court masques to sublime themselves – enacting an authoritarian form of baroque politics that sought to seduce their subjects through aesthetic spectacles of excess. The chapter concludes by reading John Milton’s A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle (1634) and Paradise Lost (1667) as examples of a growing resistance to the baroque during the seventeenth century. By depicting Satan and Hell as emblems of the baroque, Milton delivers a prescient warning about the dangers of excess while also creating one of the final and most extraordinary expressions of the English baroque in early modern literature.