Alciato's Book of Emblems
Other Sites

Society for Emblem Studies
This is the site for the Society. There is a useful page of links, and an interesting account of the ongoing digitization project.

The Emblem Project Utrecht
A sophisticated presentation of selected texts of Dutch love emblems. Impressive documentation and presentation. Excellent bibliography and links page.

The English Emblem Book Project
A project from the library of Pennsylvania State University in which ten important English emblem books, some in late editions, have been scanned. Along with the scans, a bibliography. The books are:

Ayres, Philip Emblemata amatoria, Emblemes d'amour en quatre langue (c 1680)
B., R. [pseud for Nathaniel Crouch] Choice emblems, divine and moral, antient and modern, or, Delights for the ingenious, in above fifty select emblems ... with fifty pleasant poems and lots, by way of lottery, for illustrating each emblem (6th ed, 1732)
G[oodyere], H[enry] The mirrour of maiestie, or, The badges of honor conceitedly emblazoned (1618) [Not yet scanned]
Harvey, Christopher The School of the Heart, or, The heart of it self gone away from God, brought back again to him, and instructed by him, in 47 emblems (3rd ed, 1676)
Hugo, Herman Pia Desideria trans Edm. Arwaker (2nd ed, 1690)
Paradin, Claude The heroicall devises of M. Claudius Paradin, Whereunto are added the Lord Gabriel Symeons and others. Trans P.S. (1591).
Quarles, Francis Emblems, divine and moral, together with Hieroglyphicks of the life of man (unidentified ed of early 18c)
Whitney, Geffrey A Choice of Emblemes, and other devises, For the moste part gathered out of sundrie writers, Englished and Moralized. And divers newly devised (1586)
Wither, George A collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne, Quickened with metricall illustrations, both Morall and divine: And Disposed into lotteries, that instruction, and good counsell, may bee furthered by an honest and pleasant recreation (1635)

George Wither, A Collection of Emblemes, 1635
Preliminary work on a digital edition by well-known emblem scholars Peter Daly and Alan Young.

Emblem Books
A full set of scans of the 1531 text of Alciato, with summary emblem texts in English, prepared by Bob Hay, who runs a web operation in Athens, Georgia. Nice idea, but marred by typos and minimal sense of historical context.

Emblem Books in Leiden
An on-line catalogue of the collections of Leiden University Library, the ‘Maatschappijder Nederlandse Letterkunde’ and Bibliotheca Thysia.

Emblem books in the Libraries of Munich
The extensive "Liste der Emblembücher in Münchener Bibliotheken" is available here as a downloadable rtf or older Word file.

Studiolum
An announcement of a collection of electronic texts, including the 1531 and 1621 Alciato texts, and various works and editions of Anacreon, Cartari, Doni, Erasmus, Horapollo, Pausanias, Plutarch, Ripa. Not all working when we last checked, but many useful links.

Compendio de Emblemas Españoles Illustrados
The Compendium of Illustrated Spanish Emblems is a CD-ROM and book project, now completed and awaiting publication. The work has been prepared by Antonio Bernat Vistarini (who also has a page on Spanish emblem literature), John T. Cull, and Edward J. Vodoklys SJ, with Antonio Fdez Coca as technical advisor. The Spanish participants are at the Universitat de les Illes Balears in Mallorca, the English at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. The site shows sample pages. The editors will include the Latin and English versions of Alciato (taken from the Index Emblematicus by Peter Daly et al).

Grupo de Investigación sobre Literatura Emblemática Hispánica
This page announces the formation of a study group on Spanish emblem literature, at the Universidade da Coruña. There is an excellent bibliography.

German Emblem Books: A Digital Imaging Project
This is a new project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Mnemosyne
An ambitious project at Leiden University in the study of iconology. There is a plan to convert a number of emblem books into SGML. Claude Paradin's Devises heroïques is the only one to be converted so far, but Alciato is next. This site is technically sophisticated, with the project intended to serve as a important scholarly resource in icon classification. Elsewhere on the site there is an interesting and thorough discussion of the adage festina lente.

An Analytic Bibliography of On-line Neolatin Texts
A very useful list of some 120 Neolatin works currently on the Web, prepared by Dana Sutton, who teaches classics at University of California, Irvine.

Early Modern Literary Studies
The site has moved to the University of Alberta. The "WWW Resources" page gives an excellent survey of materials for the period.

Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (Toronto)
The Bookmark page is another fine survey of Renaissance materials.

Voice of the Shuttle
Alan Liu's page of Renaissance links may also be recommended.

The Colonna Project
As of fall 1997, no longer running. For information on a new English translation, see our Bibliography on the Hypnerotomachia. Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (or Dream-Strife of Poliphilus) is a remarkable symbolic text of the 15th century, first printed by Aldus Manutius in 1499. The Information Media Design Group at Rutgers University is working on a web reproduction of the 1499 edition, a summary text in English, and the 1597 English translation. (Sam Hoyt, a designer for the project, has allowed us to use the red and gold knot design you see below and on some of our other pages. He used a Renaissance bookbinding as his inspiration.)

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
A complete scan of the 1499 text from MIT Press and the Design Knowledge Systems Group at the Technical University of Delft, to accompany the new book by Lianne Lefaivre (a study of the work, with an unusual claim that the book is by Leon Battista Alberti). Some additional information and graphics also provided.

Mateo / Mannheim Texts On Line
A rich collection of tests, some illustrated, from the library of the University of Mannheim in Germany. Most interesting for readers of Alciato site are the Aesop of 1501 and the full illustrations of Boissard's portrait book of 1652-69, most of the plates reused from the edition of 1597-9. Note that though beautifully scanned the image files are very large.

Back to Alciato Welcome Page
Last modified 14 March 2002