Beyond Adaptation: Emblematics as an Intersemiotic Translation

Abstract

The essay analyses Renaissance emblematics as a form of intersemiotic translation. To this end, the adoption of a semiotic approach is proposed in order to go beyond the traditional analysis of iconographic, literary or philosophical models and highlight the richness and implications of a syncretic semiotic system whose translational elements have not been fully appreciated so far.Starting from concrete examples, the essay tries to demonstrate that emblematics is not an ancillary practice to circulate didactic texts deliberately seasoned with a little hieroglyphic flavour. On the contrary, it negotiates with source texts relying on its own semiotic tools to multiply their meaning potential while keeping their internal coherence, so that it goes even beyond adaptation to become a fully fledged transposition.The essay, therefore, aims at opening up new theoretical perspectives and a new practical approach to a kind of textuality that may have a major hermeneutic impact on translation studies and, at a more general level, on the analysis of figurality in early modern texts.