Francis Quarles

English emblems

History of scholarship , from Daly and Silcox, The Modern Critical Reception of the English Emblem (1991):

• Victorian revival, Henry Green’s bibliography of editions of Alciato
• first decades of 20c, Continental scholars investigating intellectual and cultural sources of emblem; Karl Giehlow and Ludwig Volkmann
• 1930s, mannerism re-discovered, Mario Praz’s Studies in 17c Imagery (1939) — emphasizes wit and enigma, tradition that continues in art history
• “The iconographical research associated with the Warburg Institute did much to draw attention to the emblem as a symbolic mode, but emblems were mostly used in the interpretation of larger works of art. Consequently, the resulting criticism often resembles the topos-criticism of litrary history.” (11) — books “rarely considered forthemselves in their own right” (11)
• Robert J. Clements, Picta Poesis (1960), “places emblem books in the general context of Renaissance aesthetics and literary theory” (11)
• “reawakening of interest among German critics since the 1960s” (11)
  • Emblematik und Drama in Zeitalter des Barock (1964)— emphasizing allegory, symbolism
  • Emblemata Handbuch (1967)
• Rosemary Freeman (1967)
• German use of semiotics and communications theory, turn to reader reception of emblem
• problem of what to call emblem writer — and how to acknowledge agency of printer/publisher in producing emblems (18)
• Charles Moseley, A Century of Emblems (1989) (19-20)

Carsten-Peter warncke, Sprechende Bilder (1987)