Die Kunst der Aufrichtigkeit im 17. Jahrhundert

At first glance, the category of 'sincerity' has little in common with 17th century culture. On the contrary, the desire to break with the aesthetic conventions and the artificiality of semiotic systems is regarded as a characteristic of the subsequent historical epoch - the Enlightenment - and its vehement efforts to set itself off from the Baroque. The book relativizes the incisive nature of this distinction in the history of ideas by inquiring into the forms and strategies of the authentic, the natural, and the straightforward in the literature, the arts, the behavioural doctrines, and the cultural history of the early modern age.