This book - the first full-length study of the blason poétique examines the evolution of this French genre in the course of the sixteenth century, but also traces its earliest heraldic origins and indicates its subsequent development into the seventeenth century. The blason is treated in general but attention is concentrated particularly upon the anatomical blasons and contreblasons written by Clément Marot and his contemporaries in the 1530s and 1540s with a revaluation of their chronology in the light of hitherto «lost» editions, and an examination of the poems themselves and their debt both to the native French tradition and to Italian influences. Parallels are traced with contemporary illustrated verse, and the study attempts to demonstrate how - far from being an ephemeral eccentricity - the genre fits into the overall pattern of sixteenth-century French verse.

Complète les deux ouvrages publiés dans la même collection, d'Alison Saunders, Stephen Rawles et Alison Adams. L'index des noms et des lieux enrichit la bibliographie des oeuvres secondaires consacrées aux emblèmes français et en facilite l'utilisation.

This collection explores the evolution of notions about masculinity during the intense crisis of Renaissance and early modern France. Authors of the period reflect the anxieties about masculinity that became more pronounced against the backdrop of major events and innovations of the period: the religious conflict in France, the repeated questioning of religious and royal authority, the revival of Greek skepticism, the discovery of the New World, and the rise of clinical medicine. These events in turn fueled growing doubt concerning the fixed and hierarchical nature of gender distinction, a distinction upon which many felt French culture was dependent for its very survival.

An examination of how the body--its organs, limbs, and viscera--were represented in the literature and culture of early modern Europe. This provocative volume demonstrates, the symbolism of body parts challenge our assumptions about "the body" as a fundamental Renaissance image of self, society, and nation.

Argues for a new kind of criticism, one that mediates between literal and allegorical modes of interpretation.

Rev. ed. of: The Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics / Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan, co-editors; Frank J. Warnke, O.B. Hardison, Jr., and Earl Miner, associate editors. 1993.