Emblem Of Good Will

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 volume of the Index Emblematicus deals with three early seventeenth-century works: Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine, by William Camden; The Mirrour of Maiestie, by H.G.; and Otto van Veen's Amorum Emblemata. Camden's Remaines is noteworthy for using imprese in language as pictorial image; for mixing imprese with cognizance; and for considering impresa itself as the identity of the individual rather than as a general principle. H.G.'s Mirrour is remarkable in that every one of its emblems consists of a personal heraldic coat of arms of an identified statesman twinned with a pictorial engraving, motto, and epigram on an opposite page. Van Veen's Emblemata enters literary history as a volume of emblem pictures consecrated to secular love experience, encapsulating some of the conventions of the sonnet sequences and having a strong influence on religious love literature. Each book is reproduced with critical and bibliographic introductions, translation of the poems and mottos, descriptions of the emblems, and indices to the visual and verbal components of the works.