Reading List for Whitney's Choice of
Emblemes
Bibliography and General Background
For a discussion of the relation of Whitney to Alciato, there are
two excellent essays. John Manning, "Whitney's Choice of
Emblemes: A Reassessment," Renaissance Studies 4
(1990) 155-200 deals with the background of Whitney's writing.
Mary V. Silcox, "'Gleanings Out of Other Mens Harvestes': Alciato
in Whitney's A Choice of Emblemes" in Michael Bath, John
Manning, and Alan R. Young, eds., The Art of the Emblem:
Essays in Honour of Karl Josef Hoeltgen (New York: AMS Press,
1993), 161-200, is a more detailed analysis of Whitney's actual
use of Alciato, of the way Whitney shifts the emblems for an
English audience.
A fairly recent bibliography for Whitney is found in Peter M. Daly and
Mary V. Silcox, The English Emblem: Bibliography of Secondary
Literature (Munich: K.G. Saur, 1990), 81-4.
The Manuscripts
For a more detailed analysis of Whitney's borrowings, there is
Mason Tung, "Whitney's A Choice of Emblemes Revisited: A
Comparative Study of the Manuscript and the Printed Versions,"
Studies in Bibliography 29 (1976), 32-101, especially 79-
85. The manuscript is Harvard MS Typ. 14, a lovely presentation
copy in sepia with a delicate blue wash, prepared for the earl of
Leicester in 1585 (Philip Hofer first showed me this copy many years ago during a
tour of the stacks at the Houghton). Whitney's printed emblems have marginal
notes; the ms does not. And though the printed text is slightly longer
than the ms, the ms has 15 emblems not in the printed text.
There is a later manuscript. This is a draft of 126 unillustrated
mottoes and poems, and is described
in H.H.E. Craster, "The First Draft of Geoffrey Whitney's Emblems
(MS. Rawlinson Poetry 56)" Bodleian Library Record 6
(1932) 173ff.
An Index
An index to Whitney is given in Peter M. Daly, et al., The
English Emblem Tradition, vol. 1 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1988).
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First posted 3 November 1995; revised 1 April 2003