Peter M. Daly

William Marshall's Emblems (1650) Rediscovered

nglish emblems consist of a small group in comparison with the more extensive production of vernacular emblems on the Continent. But they are more numerous and significant than many students of sixteenthand seventeenth-century English literature and culture realize. This is because the only book-length study and bibliography of English emblems, by Rosemary Freeman, and the recently published A n Index of Icons in English Emblem Books 1500-1700 (Norman, Okla., 1986) by Huston Diehl underestimate both the number and importance of books of emblems and impresas in English. According to our estimates, which are being continually revised upwards, at least 5 5 books appeared in over 1 3 0 editions by 1700. New editions and even new emblem books are being discovered and reported regularly. The latest addition in this process of rediscovery is the subject of this brief essay. The set of six emblems reproduced here is, as far as we know, unique and hitherto unknown. It was discovered in the Folger Shakespeare Library at the end of a collection of emblems bound together and simply entitled Emblems [ca. 1 6 5 0 1 . ~ The collection is described by the library as “Various emblems, some numbered, some pasted in, without title-page, pagination, and signatures. Title taken from the back of binding. Smedley copy.” The volume has a nineteenthcentury binding with the label “EX libris W. T. Smedley” and is a collection of emblem engravings from at least two different sources. The first group of engravings in this collection consists of 41 emblems-each containing a pictura and a Latin single-line subscriptioand five allegorical figures. They are presented one per page, recto only, except for five sets of two per page. The names of four of the

Processing emblems with the computer

Before outlining the way in which we are using the computer to help process European emblems, I should explain what emblems are, and why we are subjecting them to this electronic scrutiny. An emblem is a combination of text and graphics; more precisely, a tripartite structure introduced by a motto, followed by a symbolic picture, and elucidated by an epigram in verse, or occasionally by a prose statement. The impresa works in the same way but comprises solely a motto and picture. Each emblem makes a self-contained statement about a specific subject, usually identified briefly, even elliptically, in the motto. That subject is then bodied forth pictorially with its symbolic clusters of images; it is further described, elucidated and interpreted in the concluding epigram. The emblem is thus as much a symbolic mode of thought as it is an artistic form combining graphics and texts. We now recognize it as an important expression of the culture life of the Renaissance and the Baroque, reflecting interests as divergent as love and war, religion, ethics and politics, social customs and foibles, humanistic knowledge and pure entertainment.