De muscipulis et caveis. The cage and the mousetrap as pictorical and literary motifs in neo-latin emblem books

Abstract

Topics and metaphors within the system of classical rhetoric served as store-houses at times, to express ideas from the most general to the most particular, passing through an infinite number of the most varied concepts and realities. The authors sought to evoke a world of conceptual associations in the mind, so as to arrive at the most profound feelings of the reader. The same may be said of emblematic literature, a genre with a moral and didacticvocation. It fully exploits the polyvalent and at times antagonistic symbolism of image and word, to offer its potential readers a flood of reflections with which to orient their political and religious thought. In this work, we shall analyse the graphic and literary motifs of the mousetrap and the cage and their symbolic interpretation through the emblems of the Dutch physician, philologist, historian, and poet Adriaen de Jonghe or Hadrianus Junius (1511-1575).