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This outstanding work of scholarship, the first of two projected volumes
devoted to the subject, will be of great interest and potentially of considerable
usefulness not only to specialists in the field of French emblematics,
but to all scholars concerned with the history of the book in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Thanks to the very broad and inclusive approach
taken by the authors in their definition of the corpus of works to be
treated, this bibliography exhaustively and definitively treats a very
large number of works that by most definitions would lie well outside
the scope of the French emblem book. Those familiar with the field will
be aware that the very definition of terms such as 'emblem' and 'emblem
book' is still hotly contested; the authors have very sensibly chosen
to begin with some definitions. 'France', for example, takes in the French-
speaking territory of the time under study, so that emblem books published
in Geneva and Brussels are included. In the case of Antwerp, however,
only books published in French or including French texts have been treated.
The definition of 'emblem book' is similarly broad: the authors write
that they have included not only works specifically claiming to include
emblems or devices, but "many others whose structure or modus operandi
is 'emblematic' in the sense of juxtaposing visual and textual material
to express a message" (xxiii). Rather than focusing on the questions of
form which have tied so many scholars in knots, they have chosen to include
works of "permanence" and "substance": ephemera such as pamphlets and
brief unillustrated accounts of royal entries, for example, are not included.
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The authors' introduction provides an exceptionally full account of
the bibliographical methodology used in the volume. It must be said that
more detail is provided in the entries about pagination or foliation,
collation and signature numbering than most scholars will ever require,
but one is grateful to the authors for their consistently meticulous approach
to the description of the works treated. Where variants and anomalous
states exist, these are fully described, and the "fingerprint" for each
edition is given "wherever it can be established meaningfully" (xxix).
Details of mistakes in pagination and in signature numbering, very frequent
in this corpus, are given in full. One of the most useful parts of each
entry will be the list of copies located, which is encoded using abbreviations
similar to those found, for example, in the Union Catalogue. The
authors have consciously excluded library pressmarks, and this may be
disappointing to some readers because of the potential value of these
to scholars seeking to locate copies in a particular library. In the end,
though, their decision seems a sound one, for as they write, "we also
know from bitter experience that pressmarks change, or are badly recorded
elsewhere, or are subject to variations of presentation which render their
publication useless". (xxxi) The standard previous reference works by
Mario Praz, John Landwehr, Henry Green, Mason Tung and others are cited
as necessary.
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Fittingly, the volume begins with a lengthy treatment of the emblem books
of Andrea Alciato, alphabetically as well as chronologically the first
author of emblem books. The authors provide a brief but very useful bibliographical
introduction to the many editions of Alciato, with sections on each of
the major publishers including Wechel and the De Tournes and Rouille (often
spelled Roville) families. As the leading authority on the publishers
concerned Stephen Rawles is particularly well placed to write these introductory
sections.
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The individual entries contain, in addition to the very exhaustive bibliographical
material, at least one illustration taken from the edition under study.
In many cases, only the title page is reproduced, but one frequently finds
reproductions of a typical page from the volume; these are extremely useful
in helping readers to visualize the presentation, which, as scholars familiar
with the area will know, varies enormously from one book to another in
size and location of woodcut, number of textual fragments and their location.
As a result, the volume is a visual feast as well as being an invaluable
reference work.
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The decision to include works published outside France, as well as works
published in France but not written in French, means that many of the
volumes treated herein have only a nodding acquaintance with the French
emblem corpus per se. For example, items 146 through 171 are the
works of the great Dutch emblematic poet Jacob Cats; the actual French
content of these volumes is very slight indeed, being limited in many
cases to a simple rhyming couplet, far shorter than the Latin and Dutch
texts. As the authors write, however, "Cats is one of the major figures
in emblem literature," and his emblem books were a rich source for subsequent
writers. Few of us will regret the decision to include his books here,
and the authors' supplementary decision to focus in their illustrations
on Cats's emblems 'Qua non nocet' and 'Infectum petitur' rather than choosing
to illustrate a different emblem for each edition provides a most useful
chronological record of the changes in illustration throughout the lengthy
and varied publishing history of Cats's two emblem books.
- My one real regret concerning this volume is that the authors chose to
delay the publication of all indexing until the appearance of the second
volume. As a result it is next to impossible to locate references to titles
or authors except those alphabetized in the volume, which deals with Alciato
through Karl Ludwig. A more minor quibble is that, despite the adoption
of the broad criteria for inclusion, the authors have not treated some of
the paraemblematic material produced by the more important French authors
included here. Though Corrozet's Fables and Blasons domestiques
are not true emblem books, they are nonetheless of great interest and are
highly similar to his Hecatomgraphie both in content and manner of
presentation. Similarly, Barthélemy Aneau's and Guillaume Guéroult's
works on natural history show striking resemblances to their Picta poesis
and Premier livre des emblems. But the volume is so rich, and the
standard of scholarship so high, that it seems ungrateful to complain.
