1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910808430403321

Autore

Russell Daniel S.

Titolo

Emblematic structures in Renaissance French culture / / Daniel Russell

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto, [Ontario] ; ; Buffalo, [New York] ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Toronto Press, , 1995

©1995

ISBN

1-4426-5603-4

1-4426-2347-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (352 p.)

Collana

University of Toronto Romance Series ; ; 71

Disciplina

704.9/46/0944

Soggetti

Emblems - France - History

Emblem books, French - History

History

Electronic books.

France

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- Medieval and early Renaissance antecedents -- Book illustration in medieval France and the relation between picture and text in the later Middle Ages -- The allegorical antecedents -- Proto-emblematics in the fifteenth century -- Proto-emblematics in the early sixteenth century -- Emblems in Renaissance France -- Alciato and the humanist background of the emblem -- The dissemination of the emblem idea in France -- The construction of the early French emblem -- Emblematics and the structuring of a culture -- Emblematics and court culture -- Emblematic structures in Renaissance literature -- Conclusion.

Sommario/riassunto

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.