Must I Needs Want Solidnesse Because by Metaphors I Speak?: Emblematics, Stylistics, Materiality

Daniele Borgogni

doi:10.13189/lls.2015.030207

Abstract

Emblems and devices were typical in their hybrid nature, with textual and visual elements mutually interpreting and reinforcing each other. Using symbols and metaphors, however, did not necessarily mean producing superficial, entertaining forms of art with no solidnesse: rather, emblems and devices can be considered as wide cultural indexes in perennial negotiations with the materiality of their symbols. Seen from this point of view, their study can highlight various aspects that are central to the empirical study of Early Modern literature and provide a fresh look at this cultural phenomenon and at the changes in relevance paradigms in a period rife with epistemological and political tensions. Moreover, emblematic texts stressed the centrality of the interpretative moment of a participatory reader and are thus prone to fruitful stylistic analyses: in particular, the stringent theoretical tools provided by Relevance Theory's inferential model of communication can expose not only the emblematists' rhetorical strategies to direct their reader, but also their increasing tendency of constraining the latter's hermeneutic possibilities, allowing a fruitful analysis of emblematic literature and its cultural, economic and ideological bearings.

Highlights

Introduction would emphasize their epistemological significance, and cherished emblematic compositions because of their hybrid nature, with textual and visual elements mutually interpreting and reinforcing each other. This means that emblematics should be more correctly considered as an idiosyncratic and polyphonic form of art: its mixing of different media had obvious connections with didactic and devotional literature, but it aimed at producing an intuitive type of communication with rhetorical and philosophical implications
Emblematic compositions, were not Fishian self-consuming artifacts, but texts that must come to terms with the materiality of their symbols: they were heavily dependent on their comely and enticing appearance, whose relevance as a concrete, pleasurable object cannot not be dismissed as something purely superficial and instrumental2
The study of emblematics from this perspective can highlight various aspects that are central to the empirical study of Early Modern literature

Summary

Introduction

Introduction would emphasize their epistemological significance, and cherished emblematic compositions because of their hybrid nature, with textual and visual elements mutually interpreting and reinforcing each other. This means that emblematics should be more correctly considered as an idiosyncratic and polyphonic form of art: its mixing of different media had obvious connections with didactic and devotional literature, but it aimed at producing an intuitive type of communication with rhetorical and philosophical implications. Emblems and devices have been branded as entertainment for antiquarians, as a repertoire of symbolic images and Baroque euphuism, as plain devotional texts, especially after their didactic potential was exploited as a vehicle for religious truths.

Discussion

Conclusion