This book deals with the De Bry collection of voyages, one of the most monumental publications of Early Modern Europe. It analyzes the textual and iconographic changes the De Bry publishing family made to travel accounts describing Asia, Africa and the New World. It discusses this editorial strategy in the context of the publishing industry around 1600, investigating the biography of the De Brys, the publications of the Frankfurt firm, and the making of the collection, as well as its reception by Iberian inquisitors and seventeenth-century readers across the Old World. The book draws on a wide variety of primary sources, and is hence important for historians, book historians, and art historians interested in the development of Europe's overseas empires.

The Representations of the Overseas World in the De Bry Collection of Voyages, 1590-1634

Philostratus illustrated: the reception of 'The Imagines' in Renaissance art and culture

The article focuses on the dialectic relationship between visual and verbal representations in Renaissance emblematics, a multimodal genre in which words and images were inherently interactive and physiologically intermingled. Devices and emblems were “assemblages” of different modes and mediums, full of rhetorical wit and sophisticated allusions, and made the most of their appealing mix of discourse and representation to provide a practical moral lesson together with learned amusement. The article tries to discuss and revise these well-known aspects from a stylistic and cognitive perspective, relying on the analytical tools provided by Relevance Theory and Conceptual Integration Theory in the belief that such synergetic approach to emblematic texts is particularly rewarding to highlight the ideological implications of the unprecedented power attributed to the relation between images and language in the Renaissance. In particular, the article underscores the ideological dimension of emblematics, in a period rife with political and social tensions, and tries to draw attention to the ways in which this symbolic form of communication was transformed into an Althusserian practice of interpellation, interrogating the authority of the speaking subject and producing changing patterns in its relationship with the reader.

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Discourse and Representation in Emblematics: Hermeneutic and Ideological Implications of Stylistic and Cognitive Analyses

The De Bry collection of voyages, published in Frankfurt and Oppenheim between 1590 and 1634, has traditionally been regarded as dispensing a Protestant iconography of the New World. But for the analysis of the translated travel accounts in the collection, too long considered of secondary importance to the monumental copper engravings, a fundamentally different interpretation of the editors' objectives is in order. This article studies the Latin and German versions of the narratives, which offer a mosaic of variations disclosing a careful editorial strategy. While the German volumes were aimed at a predominantly Protestant readership, their Latin counterparts were adjusted to meet the demands of Catholic customers and humanists wary of religious polemic. Hence the first comprehensive set of images of early America reached readers across the Old World, regardless of their confessional allegiance. Commercial motives rather than the desire to spread a Protestant iconography determined the collection's representations.

The De Bry collection of voyages (1590-1634): early America reconsidered

Purpose




Early Modern emblem books are primary sources for scholars studying the European Renaissance. Linked Open Data (LOD) is an approach for organizing and modeling information in a data-centric manner compatible with the emerging Semantic Web. The purpose of this paper is to examine ways in which LOD methods can be applied to facilitate emblem resource discovery, better reveal the structure and connectedness of digitized emblem resources, and enhance scholar interactions with digitized emblem resources.




Design/methodology/approach




This research encompasses an analysis of the existing XML-based Spine (emblem-specific) metadata schema; the design of a new, domain-specific, Resource Description Framework compatible ontology; the mapping and transformation of metadata from Spine to both the new ontology and (separately) to the pre-existing Schema.org ontology; and the (experimental) modification of the Emblematica Online portal as a proof of concept to illustrate enhancements supported by LOD.




Findings




LOD is viable as an approach for facilitating discovery and enhancing the value to scholars of digitized emblem books; however, metadata must first be enriched with additional uniform resource identifiers and the workflow upgrades required to normalize and transform existing emblem metadata are substantial and still to be fully worked out.




Practical implications




The research described demonstrates the feasibility of transforming existing, special collections metadata to LOD. Although considerable work and further study will be required, preliminary findings suggest potential benefits of LOD for both users and libraries.




Originality/value




This research is unique in the context of emblem studies and adds to the emerging body of work examining the application of LOD best practices to library special collections.

Stephen Rawles

Papers

A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

A spine of information headings for emblem-related electronic resources

Layout, typography and chronology in Chretien Wechel's Editions of Alciato

A bibliography of Claude-François Menestrier : printed editions, 1655-1765

A bibliography of French emblem books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries