The research shows that two affective shifts took place in the Gustavian culture under the reign of Gustav III. During the 1770s and 1780s, a nobiliary sensibility was replaced by a bourgeoise sentimentality, followed by a fortifying reaction in the late 1780s.

Opera is central to the study, being the king’s vehicle for a pervasive cultural renewal, with the goal to achieve the formation of a Swedish nation. Repercussions can be discerned on the Gustavian literature, visual arts, spoken drama and architecture – and in gardening, too. The renewal appeared in a society where the king gave the lower estates power at the cost of the nobility and where a market for the arts emerged.

The world of the Gustavian era is disclosed in this way. Hereby, a new approach to the period is achieved, where Gustavian culture is treated as an important part of the late eighteenth-century culture of Europe, instead of being peripheral.

The aim of the research is to elucidate the affective import on cultural and social change. Affectivity is therefore not seen as the outgrowth of historical and societal change, but as a dimension which can be fundamental to these events. The concept of patheme – the ground of affectivity – is crucial to this elucidation of the Gustavian culture.