ABSTRACT
This chapter, placing identity at its heart, proposes a fresh approach to the study of court festivals in the early modern period. The discussion is situated within the context of the Holy Roman Empire in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but will be of interest to scholars of identity, state formation and court festivals within all areas of the early modern world. The chapter draws on a rich methodological literature from numerous historical sub-disciplines, including the history of material culture and diplomatic history, as well as bringing to bear approaches from related fields such as sociology and anthropology. The chapter argues that, in the case of the Holy Roman Empire, court festivals were central to attempts at propagating a unifying rhetoric of identity and the resulting legitimisation of power, thus superseding existing heterogeneity. The chapter concludes by urging historians to think of early modern Europe in terms of areas of claimed identities – not necessarily homogenous states, but states which existed and acted on the basis of a legitimacy, contested or otherwise, that could only exist in the presence of a rhetoric of identity.
