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Material Texts: Alexander Bevilacqua (Williams College): "Festivities and Race-Making: Assessing The Visual and the Written Record"

Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, sixth floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library

In the sixteenth-century German-speaking lands, the knightly tournament developed into an activity for the impersonation of visible human difference. Long before it became common to enlist non-European people in court performances, European princes and nobles themselves impersonated foreign rulers through costuming, masking, and cosmetic transformation. Though eventually they would incorporate Atlantic materials and referents, these performances initially expressed longstanding Mediterranean and Central European perceptions of human alterity, in particular those of chivalry.