Scholars in multiple disciplines now recognize the emblem as a significant expression of the cultural life of the Renaissance and the Baroque, reflecting a panoply of interests ranging from war to love, from religion to philosophy to politics, from the sciences to the occult, from social mores to encyclopedic knowledge, and from serious speculation to entertainment. Following Andrea Alciato's publication of the first emblem book in 1531, the form enjoyed its heyday in the seventeenth-century, appearing in speeches, sermons, and printed texts, but also in wall and ceiling decorations, jewelry, carvings, paintings, and other material expressions. Beyond this early boom, the emblem was again present in eighteenth-century title pages and frontispieces, and experienced twentieth-century manifestations during the ideological battles of both world wars and Quebec's attempt at secession from Canada. "The Companion to Emblem Studies" introduces the multiple forms that the emblem has taken through nearly five centuries of production, and offers an interdisciplinary and international assessment of the long history of this pervasive symbolic device.
"The Companion" features essays on the emblem in the various countries that use those vernacular languages; on Alciato, the "father and prince of emblems"; on bibliography and theory; on the Jesuit and Neo Latin emblems, which cut across national groupings; on flags and tournaments; and on emblems in recent material culture, logos, and advertisements. "The Companion" features 130 illustrations and concludes with a "Selective Bibliography for Further Reading," which includes works written in western European languages and expands the volume's usefulness for researchers and students in the field.