On the Dramatic Nature of the Most Famous English Emblem-Collection: Francis Quarles: Emblemes, 1635

The paper deals with a world-famous collection of the once exteremely popular literary genre of 'poesis tacens' (silent poetry), entitled Emblemes Divine and Morall (1635), written by the English poet-moralist, Francis Quarles (1592-1644). The rich Quarlesian ouvre was analysed from various aspects - the purpose of the present small contribution to its research was to clarify its continental, mainly German background. The road leads first of all to Heidelberg, where Quarles was one of Princess Elizabeth's cupbearers at her pompous Valentine wedding with Frederick V., the Elector Palatine, in 1613. The highly visual-theatrical nature of the royal nuptial events are also discussed within the framework of my survey, mainly as the perhaps most important formative factors in the author's intellectual and artistic development. William Marshall and William Simpson, the two illustrators are also called back on some pages and a late 17th - early 18th century Hungarian Jesuit stage design collection is also mentioned - as a somehow coincidental parallel of the Emblemes. The primary texts, illustrations, the precious emblem-catalogues of Cesare Ripa, Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schöne, the publications of Prof. Karl Joseph Höltgen (University of Erlangen) and - last, but not least - the 1988 edition of regional contemporary Latin poetry, the Parnassus Palatinus (ed., transl. by Wilhelm Kühlmann and Hermann Wiegand) were the main and very useful sources of my efforts