Emblematic Structures in Renaissance French Culture / / Daniel Russell.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Toronto Press eBook-Package Archive 1933-1999
• VerfasserIn: Russell, Daniel,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©1995
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: University of Toronto Romance Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (352 p.)

The emblem and the device (or impresa as it was called in Italy) were the most direct and telling manifestations of a mentality that played a significant role in the discourse and art in Western Europe between the late Middle Ages and the mid-eighteenth century. In the history of Western symbolism, the emblematic sign forms a bridge between late medieval allegory and the Romantic metaphor. These intricate combinations of picture and text, where the picture completes the ellipses of an epigrammatic text, and where the text fixes the intention of the pictured signs, provide useful clues to the way pictures in general were read and textual descriptions visualized in early modern Europe.Daniel Russell demonstrates how the emblematic forms emerged from the way illustrations were used in late medieval French manuscript culture, how the forms were later disseminated in France, and how they functioned within early modern French culture and society. He also attempts to show how the guiding principles behind the composition of emblems influenced the production of courtly decoration, ceremony, and propaganda, as well as the composition of literary texts as different as Maurice Sc¦ve's Delie, Montaigne's Essais, and Du Bartas's Sepmaine.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations and Credits -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I. Medieval and Early Renaissance Antecedents -- 1. Book Illustration in Medieval France and the Relation between Picture and Text in the Later Middle Ages -- 2. The Allegorical Antecedents -- 3. Proto-emblematics in the Fifteenth Century -- 4. Proto-emblematics in the Early Sixteenth Century -- Part II. Emblems in Renaissance France -- 5. Alciato and the Humanist Background of the Emblem -- 6. The Dissemination of the Emblem Idea in France -- 7. The Construction of the Early French Emblem -- Part III. Emblematics and the Structuring of a Culture -- 8. Emblematics and Court Culture -- 9. Emblematic Structures in Renaissance Literature -- Conclusion -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index of Manuscripts -- Index of Motifs -- Index of Names and Key Terms