This session presents an interdisciplinary inquiry into the relationship among architecture, literary discourse, and authority in early modern European literature. In recognition of the “spatial turn”, which calls upon scholars to consider the role of space in consolidating hierarchies of power, the panelists will contribute to a growing body of research on literary representations of architectural space in relation to religious, sociopolitical, and gender dynamics in early modern Spain, France, and England.

A primary rationale for this session derives from recent scholarly recognition of the intertwined development of early modern architecture and literary theory. Following the rediscovery of classical texts such as Vitruvius’ On Architecture, Renaissance-era architects relied heavily upon literary accounts of ancient buildings to imitate classical architecture. A robust architectural print culture emerged in the form of treatises, images of architecture, and popular guidebooks to European cities featuring textual and visual representations of architectural landmarks. Simultaneously, early modern literary theorists drew upon architectural metaphors to describe rhetorical and oratory principles. The 16^th-century Italian scholar Pietro Bembo, for instance, argued that writers should emulate architects by “excavating” classical texts and imitating the “forms” left to them by the ancients. Additional analogies between literature and architecture, including principles of “structure” and linguistic “ornamentation”, were commonplace in early modern discussions of literature, and literary terms were even appropriated in architectural treatises. As noted in Alina Payne’s The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance (1999) and Ingrid Greenfield et al.’s “Antiquarian Publishing and Architectural Reconstruction” (2008), literature and architecture were deeply enmeshed disciplines, thus opening new areas of inquiry in early modern literary studies.

The second rationale undergirding this session is the growing emphasis on spatial dynamics as a lens through which to analyze early modern literature. Theorists such as Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre have laid the groundwork for analyses of urban and architectural space as social constructs through which authority figures (e.g., the state and the Church) enact and enforce their ideologies. Early modern literary scholars have implemented these theories – with specific attention to architectural space, in recognition of the reconceptualization of the architectural discipline in this time period – to analyze how the literary representation of space reinforces or contests sociopolitical hierarchies. Emily Kuffner’s Fictions of Containment in the Spanish Female Picaresque (2019) and Anne M. Myers’ Literature and Architecture in Early Modern England (2013) are just two recent examples of this fruitful intersection of architectural history and theories of space with literary analysis.

Juan Vitulli’s presentation opens this session by examining the interaction of performed literary texts with physical architectural spaces. In light of the directives from the Council of Trent concerning the reformation and regulation of the sermon genre, Vitulli considers how 17^th-century Spanish preachers utilize and refer to architectural and liturgical space in their sermons to establish their own authority and reconfigure the conventions of the sermon in response to specific political and religious contexts.

Manasvin Rajagopalan’s intervention further probes the relationship between physical architecture and literary conventions by proposing that spatial negotiation constitutes the fundamental principle of 17^th-century French theater. Considering the common spatial principles that underlie the parallel forms of Molière’s plays and the architecturally constructed Gardens of Versailles, Rajagopalan suggests that the implementation of architectural concepts in theater allows French playwrights to claim originality and literary authority.

Following these analyses of real architectural spaces in relation to literary production, Jordan Ivie considers the symbolic function of fictional architecture in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590). She compares the constructed Bower of Bliss and the natural Garden of Adonis, demonstrating how Spenser’s use of architecture as a symbol of artificiality (in contrast to the natural garden) reveals early modern anxieties concerning the politics of reproduction and traditional gender ideologies.

Finally, Felix Behler’s presentation examines fictional constructed garden spaces in early modern English literature as representative of a struggle for political hegemony. Analyzing the 17^th- and 18^th-century push to purge the English landscape of the influence of continental baroque structures, Behler argues that writers such as Anthony Ashley Cooper, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Pope “invent” the English landscape garden in their works to further English political interests.

These papers raise important questions concerning the interconnectedness of early modern architecture and literature, as well as the importance of real and represented architecture in the literary construction or contestation of sociopolitical and religious ideologies. As this session will likely attract scholars from multiple fields due to its comparative nature, each presentation will be limited to fifteen minutes to permit the audience fifteen minutes of discussion.