Emotion and the Seduction of the Senses, Baroque to Neo-Baroque. Lisa Beaven and Angela Ndalianis, eds. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture 59. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2018. xxxii + 292 pp. $129.99

[...]if the latter, should we adopt José Maravall's interpretation, seeing the Baroque as a product of the Counter-Reformation's effort to roll back Protestant heresy and the republican politics with which Protestantism is associated, or follow Walter Benjamin's Weberian lead, defining it as a melancholy symptom of modern disenchantment? On the contrary, as Monika Kaup notes in the opening sentence of the first essay in the collection, “Feeling Baroque in Art and Neuroscience: Joy, Sadness, Pride, and a Spinozist Solution to the Quest for Happiness,” there is in fact “widespread agreement about the baroque's inherent connection with the emotions, as the baroque saw an interest in the depiction of psychological states of mind and an intensified interest in the inner life of humans” (19). Though a number of the essays shed welcome light on individual authors or aspects, none changes the basic outlines of scholarly discussion. From this standpoint, Katrina Grant sheds helpful light on the contribution visual effects made to Baroque opera; Matthew Martin and Lisa Beavan provide fascinating details on the use of relics and the handling of personalized votive objects like crucifixes and rosary beads; and I learned a lot from John Weretka's physiognomic iconography of states of ecstasy, mystic vision, and rapture even if, unlike him, I continue to believe that the ecstasy of Bernini's Saint Teresa is indelibly sexualized. [...]though I tend to see the Baroque as a pan-European phenomenon that embraces the demotic realisms of the Reformed north as well as the Catholic and aristocratic idealisms of the Counter-Reformation south, I admire Justin Clemens's reading of Milton's attempt to turn the techniques of Catholic illusionism against themselves in order expose its ideological fraudulence.