Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T09:07:01.715Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Cult of the Poet in Renaissance Emblem Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert J. Clements
Robert J. Clements*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Quid petitur sacris nisi tantum fama poetis?“ inquired Boissard as a representative sixteenth-century man of letters. That he cribbed the wording of his question from Ovid merely makes him a more typically Renaissance author. Like other literary theorists of the period, the emblematists—those essayists in prose and verse who reached such a vast public in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—subscribed to the contention that the great poet achieves renown and immortality through his works. The emblematists frequently chose engravings or woodcuts containing symbols of glory, affixed brief titles or ”posies“ to these cuts, and then subjoined thereto essays or poems developing the theme of literary glory suggested by the plate. The accompanying reproduction from Peacham's Minerva Britanna (note 23) will acquaint the reader with a typical page from an emblem-book. Of all the literary notions encountered in emblem-books, this belief that the Muse saves poets from ignominy and death is the most frequent. It is the basic idea underlying the classic cult of poetic glory, the one cult shared by classic and Romanticist alike. It is interesting to see reappearing in every language of Western Europe the gratifying thought that authors win eternal life and kudos through their compositions. It strikes a most familiar note when we encounter it phrased in Renaissance Latin, for we remember reading it over and over in classic Latin texts.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 1944 , pp. 672 - 685
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1944

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 J. J. Boissard—Le Bey de Batilly, Emblemata (Frankfort, 1596), p. O 1.

2 Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, French adaptation by J. B. (Amsterdam, 1698), p. 204. On Ripa, vide infra, note 34.

3 Otho Vaenius, Horatii emhlemata (Antwerp, 1612), p. 158.

4 Horace, Odes, iv, viii.

5 Christopherus Giarda, Icones symbolicae (Milan, 1628), p. 92.

6 Work cited in note 1, p. N 4.

7 Jacob van Royen, De Leermeester der Zeden (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 39.

8 Cf. Du Bellay's “Poète courtisan,” Ronsard's “A un sien ami, fasché de suivre la Court,” and La Taille's “Courtisan retiré.”

9 M. de Gomberville, La doctrine des mœurs en cent tableaux (Paris, 1685), p. 259. In the Théâtre moral (Brussels, 1678), p. 155, the stanza begins:

Muses que vos sacrez mystères,
Changent le destin des mortels.

10 Ibid., p. 260.

11 Otho Vaenius, Horatii emblemata (Antwerp, 1612), p. 156. The Spanish version reads:

Pallas y Apollo, con su escudo, y flechas
Para los vicios, libre de passiones,
Guardan al sabio, haziendo, que derechas
El temor, la tristeza, y pretensiones
Por su poder y braco ya deshechas
Sin dar lugar, o tiempo à razones,
Vayan al mar, que con su mal secebe,
Y sopla el viento porque el mar las lleve.

12 Sebastian Brandt, Stullifera Navis, English adaptation (London, 1,570), p. 236.

13 Le Bey de Batilly, Emblemata (Frankfort, 1596), emb. li.

14 Christopherus Giarda, Icones symbolicae (Milan, 1628), p. 96.

15 Same as note 13.

16 J. J. Boissard, Icones virorum illustrium (Frankfort, 1598), iii, 97.

17 Ibid., i, 30.

18 Andreas Alciatus, Emblemata (Paris, 1536), p. 45: “Neptuni tubicen, cuius pars ultima cetum, etc.”

19 Sebastian Brandt, Stultifera Navis, English adaptation (London, 1570), p. lvo.

20 Ibid., 223.

21 Ibid., prologue, n. p.

22 Geffrey Whitney, Choice of Emblemes (Leyden, 1586), p. 131.

23 Henry Peaçham, Minerva Britanna (London, 1612), p. 161. Professor Allan Gilbert of Duke University reminds me that these stanzas are adapted from some equally alliterative lines in Spenser's Ruines of Time, vv. 440–413:

For deeds doe die, how ever noblie donne,
And thoughts of men do as themselves decay,
But wise wordes taught in numbers for to runne,
Recorded by the Muses, live for ay, etc.

24 Ibid., p. 57.

25 Emblèmes latins de J. J. Boissard, edited by Mesan (Metis, 1588), p. 40.

26 Le Roy de Gomberville, Théâtre moral de la vie humaine (Brussels, 1678), p. 127.

27 Hadrian Junius, Emblemata (Leyden, 1575), p. 66. In the 1565 edition, the posie had read merely, “Pennae gloria immortalis.”

28 Ibid., p. 141.

29 Geffrey Whitney, Choice of Emblemes (Leyden, 1586), p. 197.

30 Theatro moral de toda la philosophia (Brussels, 1669), p. 162.

31 R. J. Clements, “Pen and Sword in Renaissance Emblem Literature,” Modern Language Quarterly, v (June, 1944).

32 J. J. Boissard, Icones virorum illustrium (Frankfort, 1597), ii, 85.

33 Boissard-De Batilly, Emblemata (Frankfort, 1596), p. O 1.

34 Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (Milan, 1602), p. 215. While Ripa's didactic and moral purpose was akin to that of the emblematists, he was not strictly one himself. To mention only a few of the technical differences between his volume and an emblem book: not all of his definitions have plates; his illustrations do not have the inevitable posie of emblemata; his chief function is not to develop an essay on a given topic, but merely to explain how a given concept is to be represented in painting, drawing, or sculpture. He is less an emblematist than an iconologist.

35 Hadrian Junius, Emblemata (Leyden, 1575), p. 141.

36 Christopherus Giarda, Icones symbolicae (Milan, 1628), between pp. 90–91.

37 Andreas Alciatus, Emblemata (Paris, 1589), p. 692.

38 Giulio Cesare Capaccio, Delle imprese (Naples, 1592), p. 126vo.

39 Fabricio da Teramo, Delle allusioni, imprese et emblemi (Rome, 1588), p. 178.

40 Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (Milan, 1602), p. 216. A French translation by “J. B.” was published in Amsterdam (1698): “Laurier, arbre toujours verdoyant, & qui ne craint point la foudre, parce que les Muses s'assujettissent le temps” (p. 204).

41 Pierio Valeriano Bolzani, Bieroglyphica (Basle, 1567), p. 165.

42 Ieronimo Ruscelli, Delle imprese illustri (Venice, 1580), p. 153; also p. 81. The reference to Ariosto is based on Orlando Furioso, xxxv, stanzas 14, 15, 20, 22, and 23.

43 Andreas Alciatus, Emblemata (Paris, 1589), p. 631.

44 Ieronimo Ruscelli, Delle imprese illustri (Venice, 1580), p. 153.

45 Geffrey Whitney, Choice of Emblemes (Leyden, 1586), p. 126.

46 A bibliography of emblem books is being undertaken at Duke University.

The present writer takes this occasion to thank Mr. Philip Hofer for permission to examine at great length his excellent collection of emblem books in Harvard's Houghton Library, and to thank his associates Mme Salem and Miss Oldach for their courteous assistance.