Erik Wallrup: "Patheme and the Gustavian era"

Erik Wallrup, Södertörn University: "Patheme and the Gustavian era"

Abstract
In the project ‘The Affective Shift of Music in the Gustavian Era’, I investigate the aesthetic change that can be discerned in both opera and instrumental music during Gustav III’s regime 1771–92. In his cultural politics, the king’s first concern was not literature and theatre, as one could guess, but opera. It became the vehicle for his efforts to create a national culture.

This affective shift corresponds to a major affective transformation in Europe earlier in the eighteenth century, where the change influenced politics, society and culture as well as ways of thinking and feeling. It can be labelled the era of sentimentalism (William Reddy).

I shall introduce the main results of my investigation, but concentrate on the concept of patheme, discussed in an article which in a preliminary form will be distributed to the participants of the seminar. Patheme can be seen as an affective counterpart to Foucault episteme concept, grounding the relations to others, to the world and to things as well as other beings.