Between the Real and the Ideal

About this book

"This book provides an examination of the Accademia degli Arcadi, its goals and its operations, in early eighteenth-century Rome. Primarily a literary academy with a mission to replace a complex and bombastic baroque prose, the Academy vowed to promote a clear and honest eloquence. Because the Academy had a secondary interest in cultural reform, this eloquence was also viewed by some members as seminal to the development of the notion of a public good. The Arcadians targeted theater as the mechanism by which the reform could be modeled to large numbers of people. The book explores the Arcadian fascination with all aspects of theater."--Jacket.