Antwerp and Amsterdam were among the most active publishing centres for emblematic forms in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nowhere else was the emblematic mode more integrated into the literary and artistic culture than in the Low Countries. The essays are revised versions of papers presented at the Fourth International Emblem Conference held at Leuven in 1996. The table of contents provides an overview of the variety of topics and approaches represented in the volume.

This publication is the first of its kind. It approaches Anglo-Dutch relations from the angle of the production of the highly popular emblem book and its influence on important cultural and political events, mainly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Montaigne (1533-1592) is known as the inventor of the essay. His relativism, his craving for self-knowledge and his taste for freedom and tolerance have had a long-lasting influence in Europe. It is therefore surprising that until present no substantial study has been devoted to the multiple relationships between Montaigne and the Low Countries. This volume aims to fill this gap. It studies the Netherlandish presence in Montaigne’s Essays, represented by Erasmus and Lipsius and by contemporary history (the Dutch Revolt against Spain). It also deals with Montaigne’s translations and editions in the Dutch Golden Age, as well as his readership, which included humanists such as Scaliger and Vulcanius, the poets Hooft and Cats, and a painter, Pieter van Veen, who illustrated the Essays. Contributors include: Frans R.E. Blom, Warren Boutcher, Jeanine De Landtsheer, Philippe Desan, Karl A.E. Enenkel, Ton Harmsen, Jeroen Jansen, Johan Koppenol, Anton van der Lem, Michel Magnien, Kees Meerhoff, Olivier Millet, Alicia C. Montoya, Marrigje Rikken, and Paul J. Smith.

This volume of the Index Emblematicus deals with three early seventeenth-century works: Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine, by William Camden; The Mirrour of Maiestie, by H.G.; and Otto van Veen's Amorum Emblemata. Camden's Remaines is noteworthy for using imprese in language as pictorial image; for mixing imprese with cognizance; and for considering impresa itself as the identity of the individual rather than as a general principle. H.G.'s Mirrour is remarkable in that every one of its emblems consists of a personal heraldic coat of arms of an identified statesman twinned with a pictorial engraving, motto, and epigram on an opposite page. Van Veen's Emblemata enters literary history as a volume of emblem pictures consecrated to secular love experience, encapsulating some of the conventions of the sonnet sequences and having a strong influence on religious love literature. Each book is reproduced with critical and bibliographic introductions, translation of the poems and mottos, descriptions of the emblems, and indices to the visual and verbal components of the works.

An authoritative volume that is the first literary history of the Netherlands and Flanders in English since the 1970s

Situated at the crossroads of important trade routes, the bustling seaports of the Low Countries not only traded cargoes of grain and timber, silk and spices, woollen cloth and splendidly executed altarpieces, but also manuscripts and books, news, information, ideas and gossip. Thus the Netherlands were touched by the evangelical Reformation movement at an early stage and played an increasingly important role as a crossroads for religious and philosophical ideas, serving as an intermediary between different parts of the world. The third volume of Intersections is devoted to this aspect of the 'intertraffic of the mind.' Thirteen authors from various disciplines address issues such as: How 'open' were the various religious groups to new points of view and how did they react to each other's opinion? How did they get familiar with new insights and different attitudes, and what was the role of trade and traffic in spreading them? How important was the part played by the various church and civil authorities, on the different levels of local, regional and national government? Contributors include: Paul Arblaster, Pieta van Beek, Ralph Dekoninck, Jeanine De Landtsheer, Agnes Guiderdoni-Brusle, Jason Harris, Christine Kooi, Fred van Lieburg, Guido Marnef, Mia M. Mochizuki, Henk van Nierop, Charles H. Parker, P.J. Schuffel, and J.J.V.M. de Vet.