The literature of the 16th and 17th centuries was informed by the symbolic thought embodied in the mixed art form of emblems. This study explores the relationship between the emblem and the literature of England and Germany during the period.
John Manning's The Emblem 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 through its various reinventions to the present day.
This bibliography provides descriptions of 432 manuscripts from Europe and the United States, of which 341 contain visual imagery in various media. The manuscripts feature tripartite emblems proper, as well as festivity books, hieroglyphic texts, proto-emblematic material, allegories, triumphs, symbolic source books, schemata, devotional handbooks, and libri amicorum with emblematic imagery.
The emblem was big business in early-modern Europe, used extensively not only in printed books and broadsheets, but also to decorate pottery, metalware, furniture, glass and windows and numerous other domestic, devotional and political objects. At its most basic level simply a combination of symbolic visual image and texts, an emblem is a hybrid composed of words and picture. However, as this book demonstrates, understanding the precise and often multiple meaning, intention and message emblems conveyed can prove a remarkably slippery process. In this book, Peter Daly draws upon many years’ research to reflect upon the recent upsurge in scholarly interest in, and rediscovery of, emblems following years of relative neglect. Beginning by considering some of the seldom asked, but important, questions that the study of emblems raises, including the importance of the emblem, the truth value of emblems, and the transmission of knowledge through emblems, the book then moves on to investigate more closely-focussed aspects such as the role of mnemonics, mottoes and visual rhetoric. The volume concludes with a review of some perhaps inadequately considered issues such as the role of Jesuits (who had a role in the publication of about a quarter of all known emblem books), and questions such as how these hybrid constructs were actually read and interpreted. Drawing upon a database containing records of 6,514 books of emblems and imprese, this study suggests new ways for scholars to approach important questions that have not yet been satisfactorily broached in the standard works on emblems.
Emblem books--books containing pictorial representations whose symbolic meaning is expressed in words--were produced in great quantities and in numerous languages during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Because literary critics and art historians increasingly recognize the importance of the emblem in Renaissance and Baroque studies, this book answers the need for a bibliography listing the locations of all known emblem books in Spanish, as well as those translated into Spanish, written by Spaniards in other languages, and polyglot editions that contain a Spanish text. Covered in this bibliography are all emblem books published from the beginning to the end of the Spanish Golden Age, as well as a wide range of secondary sources on relevant subjects, among them mythography, paradoxography, numismatics, fetes, funerals, proverbs, apothegms, antiquarianism, collecting, and pertinent studies in art history and architecture. Providing call numbers for library locations, information on facsimile reprints, and microform editions, the work is extensively indexed--by date and place of publication, by printers and booksellers, by authors and artists, and by dedicatees, as well as by subject.
The main aim of the work is to present emblematics in Hungary in its European context, and to show the reciprocal influence between that phenomenon and mainstream literature. The description of the theoretical and historical development in Hungary is supplemented by a series of case studies examining the effect of emblematics upon various literary genres. The final chapter analyzes the link between literary emblematics and the visual arts by looking at a specific example. As in most European countries, emblematics in Hungary is part of a complex labyrinth of literary modes of thought and expression. A relative poverty of theoretical writing went hand in hand with a considerable range of emblematic practice. The emblem proved to be a transitional form between the period when signs and motifs were regarded as having specific and fixed meanings and the modern period when we have developed a different and shifting concept of language and meaning. At the same time as emblems began to penetrate the more popular levels of national culture and literature, they also became more specialized. Hungarian emblematics used, for the most part, existing pictorial and textual combinations of pictures and texts. They employed the emblem notably in genres and texts of the genus demonstrativum, which referred to matters which were topical at the time.
The ten papers in this volume were all presented at the first International Conference "The European Emblem", held in Glasgow in August, 1987 under the auspices of the Society for Emblem Studies. The conference included papers discussing most of the major European languages in which emblem books flourished, and the papers selected for the presented volume represent something of the variety and scope of current scholarship in this field. Subjects dealt with include a protoemblematic Latin translation of the Tabula Cebetis, the Emblematum Liber by Andreas Alciat, the earliest reception of the 'Ars Emblematica' in Dutch, the career of Thomas Palmer, Daniel Cramers 80 Emblemata moralia nova, and the Emlimata of Polockij. The papers selected for this volume demonstrate the vigor and variety of work in this field, whilst also suggesting some of the directions and opportunities for further research.
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.