Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Copyright page -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Illustrations -- Alciato -- The Emblematization of Nature, and the Poetics of Alciato's Epigrams -- Vernacular Forerunners of Alciato's Emblematum Liber -- A Manuscript Emblem Book before Alciato: Johann von Schwarzenberg's Mirror of Religious Virtue (Memorial der Tugent, circa 1510-1512) -- A Printed Emblem Book before Alciato: Johann von Schwarzenberg's Emblematization of Cicero's De officiis as a Mirror of Political Virtue -- The Emblematic Commentary as a Means of Transmitting Knowledge -- The Transformation of the Emblem Book into an Encyclopaedia: Stockhamer's Commentary on Alciato (1551/1556) -- The Game of Emblematic Interpretation and Emblematic Authorship: Hadrianus Junius' Emblemata (1565) -- Advanced Emblematic Transmission of Knowledge -- Early Modern Zoology as a Mirror of Princes: Joachim Camerarius' Quadrupedes (1595) -- The Transmission of Knowledge via Pictorial Figurations: Vaenius' Emblemata Horatiana (1607) as a Manual of Ethics -- Back Matter -- Bibliography -- Index Nominum.

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This study reexamines the invention of the emblem book and discusses the novel textual and pictorial means that applied to the task of transmitting knowledge. It offers a fresh analysis of Alciato's Emblematum liber , focusing on his poetics of the emblem, and on how he actually construed emblems. It demonstrates that the "father of emblematics" had vernacular forebears, most importantly Johann von Schwarzenberg who composed two illustrated emblem books between 1510 and 1520. The study sheds light on the early development of the Latin emblem book 1531-1610, with special emphasis on the invention of the emblematic commentary, on natural history, and on advanced methods of conveying emblematic knowledge, from Junius to Vaenius.