An emblem book is a book that collects emblems, meaning allegorical illustrations, together with explanatory text, typically morals or poems. The form was popular in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and a typical emblem book is built from sets of three elements: an icon or image, a motto, and a passage of text explaining the connection between the image and the motto, ranging in length from a few lines of verse to several pages of prose. Emblem books descended from medieval bestiaries that explained the significance of animals, proverbs and fables, and their writers often drew directly on Greek and Roman sources such as Aesop's Fables and Plutarch's Lives.
Facts
Place of OriginAugsburg, in the Holy Roman Empire (present-day Germany) 1 Notable ExampleEmblemata by Andrea Alciato (1531) 1 Defining TraitCollection of an icon or image, a motto, and explanatory text 1 FAQs
Is the emblem in an emblem book the picture or the text?
Scholars disagree whether the emblem is the image, the text or the pairing of the two.
Scholars differ on exactly this point. Some treat the emblem as the visual image, some as the accompanying text, and some as the combination of the two. The disagreement is understandable because the first emblem book, the Emblemata of Andrea Alciato, was first issued in an unauthorized edition in which the printer chose the woodcuts without any input from the author, who had circulated the texts in unillustrated manuscript form. Later readers came to expect picture and text together, and the picture could be read in several ways, so only the text told a reader which meaning the author intended.
Sources
1. Emblem book - Wikipedia
Timeline table, 1531 entry
Andrea Alciato, Emblemata, probably Hans Schaufelin after Jorg Breu the Elder, Heinrich Steyner, Augsburg, 1531, 104, the first and most widely disseminated emblem book.
Timeline table, 1531 entry, description column
the first and most widely disseminated emblem book.
Definition section, three-element sentence
Emblem books are collections of sets of three elements: an icon or image, a motto, and text explaining the connection between the image and motto.
In Group: Constrained and Experimental Poetry, Lead
An emblem book is a book collecting emblems (allegorical illustrations) with accompanying explanatory text, typically morals or poems.
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