Aspects Of The Emblem

The emblem, an image accompanied by a motto and a verse or short prose passage, is both art and literature: in the emblem tradition, the image presents a story – often with pictorial symbols – and the verse below it drives home the picture-story's moral instruction. It is one of the most fascinating, and enduring, art forms in Western culture. John Manning's book charts the rise and evolution of the emblem from its earliest manifestations to its emergence as a genre in its own right in the sixteenth century, and then through its various reinventions to the present day. The seventeenth century saw the development of new emblematic forms and sub-genres, and the sharpening of the form for the purpose of social satire. When the Jesuits appropriated the emblem, producing enormous quantities of material, a further dimension of moral seriousness was introduced, alongside a concentration of emblematic "wit". The emblem later came to be directed increasingly at young people and children; in particular, William Blake adopted a fresh attitude towards ideas of the child and childishness. Since then, reprints of 17th-century emblem books have been produced with new plates, and writers and artists from Robert Louis Stevenson to Ian Hamilton Finlay have used emblems in new and subversive ways.

The emblem, a Renaissance literary genre which combined text and image, conveyed erudition, admonishment, propaganda, and piety with unparalleled concision and economy. It arose out of humanist circles in the early sixteenth century and quickly became established as a staple tool in religious, political, and social discourses across the major European languages. In recent years the emblem has come to be regarded by scholars working in all areas of the humanities and cultural studies as an interdisciplinary matrix of extraordinary utility in gaining insights into the mentalities and preoccupations of the early modern era. Within its apparently slender frame, the emblem embraces questions of foremost philological, semiotic, and iconographical importance, and encompasses ideas and assumptions of exceedingly far range and reach. This collection of essays attests to the pervasiveness of the emblem, both within Renaissance and Baroque Europe, and in those parts of the wider world where European influence came to bear. It seeks to follow the development of the emblem from its beginnings in various forms of bimedial artefact, from early illustrated books and hieroglyphs, to medals and ancient coins; we then witness its deployment as a propagandistic tool in the temporal and confessional disputes of Europe. Thereafter, the emblem appears in non-European contexts, emerging as a place of cultural exchange as it became assimilated within indigenous visual traditions. The latter parts of the book concentrate on the often subliminal role emblems played in diverse literary texts, as well as their ongoing vitality in praxis or in the burgeoning area of emblem scholarship within early modern studies.

Emblems—pictorial designs with accompanying mottoes and epigrams— helped to shape virtually every form of verbal and visual communication in the West during the sixteenth and seventh centuries. A recent re-awakening of scholarly interest in the emblem has brought to light the difficulty of locating and consulting the unorganized mass of available material. Recognizing the need for a large-scale systematic index to the emblem, the editor organized a symposium at McGill University to discuss the possibilities of preparing such an index. The resulting papers by six symposium participants— Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Peter M. Daly, Peter Erb, G. Richard Dimler, Lorelei Robins, and Alan Young—contribute to our knowledge of the emblems of Peacham and Corrozet, the Dutch love emblems, the Jesuit emblem, and emblems used in books of mediation. The essays also discuss the problems and procedures involved in preparing an Index Emblematicus, a work which would serve scholars working in the fields of literature, art, culture, religion, history, and the languages. The volume is richly illustrated with over forty emblem reproductions.

Complète les deux ouvrages publiés dans la même collection, d'Alison Saunders, Stephen Rawles et Alison Adams. L'index des noms et des lieux enrichit la bibliographie des oeuvres secondaires consacrées aux emblèmes français et en facilite l'utilisation.

This study draws a new picture of the invention of the emblem book, and discusses the textual and pictorial means that were developed in order to transmit knowledge, from Alciato to Vaenius, with special emphasis on the emblem commentary and natural history.

This publication is the first of its kind. It approaches Anglo-Dutch relations from the angle of the production of the highly popular emblem book and its influence on important cultural and political events, mainly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.