Emblematic Literature and Related Sources

The first religious emblem books were published at the end of the 16 th century. Over the next two centuries, the Jesuits excelled in their production, and commissioned the publication of more than two hundred of such books throughout Europe. Jesuit authors were the more prolific, in terms both of quantity and the great variety of subjects presented. 1 The years between 1630 and 1670 saw the largest production of emblem books. In particular, outstanding theoreticians and emblem books originated in the German, French, and Belgian Jesuit Provinces. 2 During the 17 th century a host of Jesuit theorists (including Daniello Bartoli (1608-1685), Théophile Raynaud (1587-1663) and Jakob Masen (1606-1681) engaged in the argument over the so-called 'images spirituelles', that is to say, symbolic images that speak to the mind.

Journal of Jesuit Studies, 2020

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.

2011

In this paper, I propose a digital edition of an early modern emblem using the interactivity of the screen: it requires an active reader who seeks and explores links and anchors in order to decipher the specific and deeper meaning of this iconic and symbolic device. Such a meaning is experienced as a visual reading as well as an exploration of the iconic geography of the emblem itself.

Renaissance Quarterly, 2019

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.

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.