Bortoletti - Di Martino - Refini, Memory and Performance: Classical reception in Early Modern Festivals, atti del Convegno internazionale tra Parma e Londra 2022-2023, doppio numero monografico della rivista “Skenè. Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies”, 10.1 e 10.2.

The present double special issue reworks upon, and includes a selection of, essays by leading scholars and presented at a two-stage conference on Memory and Performance: Classical Reception in Early Modern Festivals (Parma: 10-14/10/22; London: 20-24/02/23), organised by Bortoletti and Di Martino and with Refini as respondent. The aim is to investigate festivals as a most important form of early modern performance culture and as a privileged mode of transmission and re-elaboration of Greco-Roman textual and non-textual material into early modern written and performance cultural practices. Renaissance festivals are one of the major focuses of early modern studies and have recently been at the centre of renewed scholarly interest and interdisciplinary discussions. These festive occasions and civic rituals played a fundamental role in Renaissance society, presenting intangible, yet crucial, aspects of early modern life and memory. Festivals should be seen as the product of a highly performative context that extended beyond the vernacular dramatic traditions that were being formed between the 15th and the 18th centuries in some parts of the European and American continents. By means of music, poetry and drama, and the visual arts, these festivals appropriated and enmeshed Graeco-Roman mythologies as well as theatrical and textual material into local, national and experimental performing practises, through which they gave voice to political tensions as well as documented transcultural exchanges across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The proposed double issue investigates festivals as a privileged place of memorability and channel of transmission of Greco-Roman textual and non-textual culture into early modern performance culture through the examination of the material that documents their existence, their spatial and textual outlines, as well as the individual and collective memories contained therein. The first part focuses on how Graeco-Roman architecture and performance culture grounded the spatial and political dimensions of performance in early modern festivals. The second part focuses on the textual traces of Graeco-Roman myths and scripts in early modern theatrical and dramaturgical practices. The period considered ranges from the 15th to the 18th centuries and includes the European and American continents.