Semantic Integration and Diversion in Henry Peacham jr.’s Emblems

Linguistics and Literature Studies

The article focuses on the dialectic relationship between visual and verbal representations in Renaissance emblematics, a multimodal genre in which words and images were inherently interactive and physiologically intermingled. Devices and emblems were "assemblages" of different modes and mediums, full of rhetorical wit and sophisticated allusions, and made the most of their appealing mix of discourse and representation to provide a practical moral lesson together with learned amusement. The article tries to discuss and revise these well-known aspects from a stylistic and cognitive perspective, relying on the analytical tools provided by Relevance Theory and Conceptual Integration Theory in the belief that such synergetic approach to emblematic texts is particularly rewarding to highlight the ideological implications of the unprecedented power attributed to the relation between images and language in the Renaissance. In particular, the article underscores the ideological dimension of emblematics, in a period rife with political and social tensions, and tries to draw attention to the ways in which this symbolic form of communication was transformed into an Althusserian practice of interpellation, interrogating the authority of the speaking subject and producing changing patterns in its relationship with the reader.

Frontiers in Communication, 2023

The article focuses on Renaissance emblematics and its privileged relationship with metaphor, considered in the light of contemporary theories as an inherently tensional form, steeped in interchange and transition and heavily relying on a basically conflictual dynamic. Though often dismissed as an academic, antiquarian form of figurality or as a pleasing symbolical form steeped in monologic stability, emblematics was in fact conceived as a brand-new hybrid textual mode whose complex interplay of signs favored multiplied discursive models and the constant relay between visual and textual elements, between abstract conceptualization and thoughts-made-visible. The paper, in other words, will try to reassess and re-evaluate emblematics as a profoundly plural form of communication whose connections with metaphor were much deeper and qualitatively di erent than it is usually thought. This slant approach to what is conventionally considered a tame example of early modern textuality highlights, on the contrary, its idiosyncratic meaning procedures: the metaphorical conceptualizations of emblematic compositions were not necessarily based on similarity and testify to their cognitive potential which ushered in an idea of communication as projective and dislocating, as a dialogic space allowing for the paradoxical copresence of ideological consistency and its deconstruction.

Le XVI ème siècle marque l'avènement et le succès croissant d'un nouveau genre pictural et littéraire, l'emblème, inauguré par le juriste milanais Andrea Alciato. En 1520, ce dernier publie une collection d'épigrammes grecques issues de l'Anthologie Palatine. La deuxième édition de cet ouvrage, en 1531, contient, en plus des textes, des gravures et des titres : la combinaison d'images et des mots donne alors naissance au genre de l'emblème. Durant la Renaissance, l'emblème devient très apprécié, en grande partie pour son aspect ludique et didactique, puisqu'il emploie deux codes sémiotiques censés conduire à un unique message, et exige donc de la part du lecteur une activité de déchiffrement et d'interprétation. Le premier chapitre de notre travail retrace les origines du genre emblématique, et tente de démontrer qu'il est, comme l'a justement remarqué Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani, un pur produit de la Renaissance, que l'auteur appelle « l'âge d'or de l'intertextualité généralisée ». Perçu comme l'objet de la quête humaniste d'un langage parfait, l'emblème est l'héritier de la théorie horatienne de l'ut pictura poesis, s'accorde à merveille avec les théories néo-platoniciennes, et s'inscrit donc dans une vision du monde étagée, confirmée par le christianisme, qui voudrait que chaque objet recèle une vérité cachée. Notre étude s'intéresse à un emblématiste en particulier, Geffrey Whitney, qui est perçu comme le père de l'art emblématique anglais.

2012

his article investigates the presence of a concealed and previously undetected numerical symbolism in a Stuart-era emblem book, Henry Peacham's Minerva Britanna (1611). Although alien to modern conceptions of art, emblem books constitute one of the most widely published and popular genres in early modern book production. Drawing from an eclectic tradition of literary, religious, and iconological traditions, the emblem book combined words and images into complex patterns of signification, often of a markedly didactic character. Popular in all the European vernaculars, it appealed to a wide range of Renaissance readers, from the nearly illiterate (by virtue of its illustrated nature) to the most erudite (by virtue of its reputation for dazzling displays of intellectual and aesthetic virtuosity). By convention the emblem was divided into three parts: superscriptio, pictura, and subscriptio: the superscriptio was the short legend or motto that typically appeared at the top of the page; below it appeared the pictura-the emblem per se-followed by the subscriptio, a longer responsive analysis, usually written in verse, which completed the design. While emblem book scholars still debate the exact relationship between the three parts-and no doubt individual emblem writers themselves sometimes conceived of it in different ways, Deitrich Walter Jöns' definition constitutes a useful and standard point of departure: "Between the motto and the picture there existed a more or less hidden relationship in meaning which the epigram illuminated." 2 This definition may readily be illustrated by Figure One, where the subscript of Peacham's emblem #24 (E4r) explains the connection between the superscript, Merenti-"to the one meriting"-and the pictura, remarking that in Peacham's day, unlike the romanticized past "Age of Justice," "Mome and Midas

2015

The article discusses the evolution of English emblematics and the changing patterns of its relationship with the reader from a Relevance Theory point of view. As multifaceted and multimodal forms of communication, and profoundly plural forms of textuality able to suit the most various ideological needs, emblem books make up a very interesting corpus of texts, while Relevance Theory, with its emphasis on a participatory reader, provides a significant theoretical model for their stylistic analysis and for the examination of the causes and effects of the transformation of their hieroglyphic essence into a conservative didactic one. A stylistic analysis can shed light on the variations and the ideological relevance of emblems in a period rife with political and social tensions; it is therefore particularly suitable for the analysis of the different rhetorical strategies deployed by opposing political or religious factions to direct the reader in the process of recognising the narrator’...

2020

For the last 200 years in literary aesthetics a radical opposition has been drawn between allegory and symbol, though no opposition like this was drawn previously. Allegory has generally been regarded as inferior to symbol, supposedly being arbitrary and mechanical where symbol was motivated and imaginative. Although more recently post-structuralists have praised allegory over symbol, they have still believed that it is radically arbitrary. In fact, allegory and symbol are both large-scale expressions of conceptual metaphor and as such are both equally motivated and equally suggestive in meaning. The illusion of a radical opposition between them is to be explained by the ideological self-interest of literary and artistic intellectuals.

Linguistics and Literature Studies, 2015

Emblems and devices were typical in their hybrid nature, with textual and visual elements mutually interpreting and reinforcing each other. Using symbols and metaphors, however, did not necessarily mean producing superficial, entertaining forms of art with no "solidnesse": rather, emblems and devices can be considered as wide cultural indexes in perennial negotiations with the materiality of their symbols. Seen from this point of view, their study can highlight various aspects that are central to the empirical study of Early Modern literature and provide a fresh look at this cultural phenomenon and at the changes in relevance paradigms in a period rife with epistemological and political tensions. Moreover, emblematic texts stressed the centrality of the interpretative moment of a participatory reader and are thus prone to fruitful stylistic analyses: in particular, the stringent theoretical tools provided by Relevance Theory's inferential model of communication can expose not only the emblematists' rhetorical strategies to direct their reader, but also their increasing tendency of constraining the latter's hermeneutic possibilities, allowing a fruitful analysis of emblematic literature and its cultural, economic and ideological bearings.

To analyse the style of drama is a bit difficult because dialogues require specific tools and techniques to be used to trace out the functionality of the tactic manipulated. However, the primary goal of conducting this work is to focus on pragma linguistic analysis of symbolism in William Saroyan's play "The Oyster and the Pear." Frye's Theory of Symbolism was used to evaluate and analyse the symbols gathered from the play. Using direct, precise, and unambiguous language is unappealing to language users because it is dry, uncomfortable, and rigid, causing language partners to get easily bored and dissatisfied. To summarize, ambiguous language is becoming increasingly common among language users as the need for honest communication contact, plain language, and assertive requirements are not immediately addressed in the communication process.

Neophilologus, 2003

The emblem did not exist as a genre when Alciato sent a collection of Latin epigrams to fellow humanist Conrad Peutinger under the title Emblematum liber ("Book of Emblems"). In recent decades scholars have advanced various theories as to what Alciato meant by this use of the term emblema, but none sufficiently accounts for the diverse range of subjects treated in the collection: not just works of fine art and figures from ancient history and literature, but such inconsequentialities as the nicknames students give to their professors. I argue that Alciato conceived emblema, by analogy to the adage, as a term for commonplace visual motifs. His project is best understood in relation to Erasmus' in the Adagiorum chiliades: a cultural storehouse making available the rhetorical practices of both the present day and antiquity.