University of AberdeenSpecial Interests

Members

Alison Saunders

Carnegie Professor of French

BA (Dunelm)
Phd (Dunelm)

Memberships:
Society for French Studies
Society for Renaissance Studies
Société Française d’Etude du XVIe Siècle
Society for Emblem Studies
Institute of Romance Studies
Bibliographical Society
Renaissance Society of America
Association of University Professors and Heads of French

Tel: 272155 ·

Research Interests

My main research interest lies in the field of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French literature, particularly in the field of poetry, and that of word and image. As well as literary and social questions, my research also covers bibliographical, and now increasingly, cross-disciplinary aspects. Having published a book on the sixteenth-century blason poétique , and a descriptive catalogue of the sixteenth-century poetry holdings of the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris, I then turned my attention towards emblematics, an ever-expanding field of interdisciplinary study now extremely fashionable among European and North American scholars. I have published two substantial books on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French emblem literature, several facsimile editions of major French emblem books, and a large number of articles and chapters in books. In collaboration with two colleagues I have produced a 2-volume descriptive bibliography of French emblem books. My current major research commitment is a similarly collaborative bibliographical project on the massive, but seriously under-documented, published output of the seventeenth-century Jesuit polymath Claude-François Menestrier. In addition to this I am also working more generally on the ’reading’ of emblematic materials, and on the Jesuit exploitation of the form for devotional and pedagogic purposes.

Return to the Top

Selected Publications

  1. In collaboration with A. Adams and S.P.J. Rawles: A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, vol.2, (Geneva: Droz, 2002).
  2. The Seventeenth-Century French Emblem: A Study in Diversity (Geneva: Droz, Travaux du Grand Siècle).
  3. In collaboration with A. Adams and S.P.J. Rawles: A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, vol.1, (Geneva: Droz, 1999).
  4. Edited with Ayers Bagley: Telling Images: The Ages of Life and Learning. Selected Papers of the Second Minnesota Conference on Cultural Emblematics (1995) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Emblem Studies Group, 1996).
  5. Editor: Guillaume de la Perrière, Le Theatre des bons engins and La Morosophie , Facsim. (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993), pp. 16 & 446.
  6. Editor: Claude Paradin, Devises heroiques, facsim. (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1990), pp 16 & 261.
  7. The Sixteenth-Century French Emblem Book. A Decorative and Useful Genre (Geneva: Droz, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 1988), pp. xii & 335.
  8. In collaboration with D.B.Wilson: Catalogue des poésies françaises de la Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 1501-1600 (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1985), pp. 205.
  9. The Sixteenth-Century Blason Poétique (Berne: Peter Lang, University of Durham Publications, 1981), pp 360.
  10. Editor: Gilles Corrozet, Hecatomgraphie, facsim. (Menston: Scolar Press, 1974) pp. 225.
  11. Editor: Guillaume de la Perrière, Le Theatre des bons engins, facsim., (Menston: Scolar Press, 1973), pp. 228.
  12. Editor: Robert Garnier, Les Juifves, facsim. (Menston: Scolar Press, 1972) pp. 49.
  13. Editor: Le Recueil Jehan Marot de Caen, facsim. (Menston: Scolar Press, 1971) pp. 91.

Return to the Top

Chapters and Articles

  1. ’Sacred, Secular or Both: Jesuit Exploitation of the Emblem in Seventeenth-Century France’, in Florilegium de Estudios de Emblematica, (2004), 607-13.
  2. ’"Disoit jadis le bon poete Homere, que Juppiter...": Classical Re-workings in Early French Vernacular Emblem Books’, in J. Britnell, C. Hampton and G, Ferguson, eds., (Re)inventing the Past: Essays on the French Renaissance in Honour of Ann Moss (Durham Modern Language Series, 2003), pp.105-23.
  3. ’Franco-Dutch Publishing Relations: The Case of Christopher Plantin’ in M. van Vaeck, H. Brems, G.H.M. Claassens, eds., The Stone of Alciato. Literature and Visual Culture in the Low Countriews. Essays in Honour of Karel Porteman (Leuven, Peeters, 2003), pp.999-1017.
  4. ’Male Views of Women and Female Views of Women: Is there an Identifiable Gender-Divide in the Sixteenth-Century Emblematic Perception of Women?’ in J.J.Britnell and J.A.Moss, eds., Female Saints and Sinners: Saintes et mondaines (France 1450-1650) , (Durham: Durham Modern Languages Series, 2003), pp.123-45.
  5. ’"The sun whose rays are all ablaze...": Emblematic Glorification of Louis XIV’, in W. Harms and D. Peil, eds., Mikrokosmos (Berne: Peter Lang, 2002), pp.481-99.
  6. ’Fantasy, Reality and Authority in the Representation of Hieroglyphic Animals in Sixteenth-Century French Illustrated Books’, in G. Szonyi, ed., The Iconography of the Fantastic (Szeged: Studia Poetica, 2002), pp.187-205.
  7. ’Sixteenth-Century Book Illustration: The Classical Heritage’ in G. Sandy, ed., The Classical Heritage in France , (Leiden: Brill, Studies in Intellectual History, 2002), pp.505-34.
  8. ’Modèles artistiques réciproques: le livre d’emblèmes comme source d’oeuvres d’art et vice versa’, in J.-P. Landry and P. Servet, eds, Le dialogue des arts, tome 1, littérature et peinture du moyen age au XVIIIe siècle, (Lyon: C.E.D.I.C.( Centre d’études des interactions culturelles de l’université Lyon 3 ), 2001), pp. 185-206.
  9. ’ "Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando?" or ’The curious case of Pierre Coustau’s Pegma’ in D. Graham, ed., An Interregnum of the Sign. The Emblematic Age in France, Essays in Honour of Daniel Russell, Glasgow Emblem Studies, 6 (2001), 29-48.
  10. ’The Emblem as a Form of Religious Literature’, in A. Pettigrew, ed., The Sixteenth-Century French Religious Book (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp.38-67.
  11. ’Make the Pupils do it Themselves: Emblems, Plays and Public Performances in Jesuit Colleges in the Seventeenth Century’, in M. van Vaeck and J. Manning, eds., The Jesuits and the Emblem Tradition (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), pp.187-206.
  12. ’French Emblem Books or European Emblem Books: Trans-national Publishing in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance , 61 (1999), 415-427.
  13. ’Emblems to Tapestries and Tapestries to Emblems: Contrasting Practice in England and France’, Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 21 (1999), 243-255.
  14. ’Visual Versus Verbal: Changing Uses of Imagery in Sixteenth-Century French Verse’, A. Armstrong, ed., Text and Image. Studies in the French Illustrated Book from the Middle Ages to the Present Day, special issue of the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1999, 269-298.
  15. ’Expanding the Emblematic Canon: How Many Emblems did Gilles Corrozet Actually Write?’, Renaissance Studies, 11 (1997), 89-107.
  16. ’Whose Intellectual Property? The Liber Fortunae of Jean Cousin, Imbert d’Anlézy or Ludovic Lalanne’, chapter in Emblems and the Manuscript Tradition, Glasgow Emblem Studies, 2 (1997), 19-62
  17. ’Word, Image and Illustration in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- Century Emblems in France’, Gyorgy Szonyi, ed., European Iconography East and West - Selected Papers of the Szeged International Conference, June 9-12 1993, (Leiden: Brill, 1996), pp.175-189.
  18. ’Youth and the Education of Youth in Early French Emblem Books’, in Ayers Bagley and Alison Saunders, eds., Telling Images: the Ages of Life and Learning. Selected papers of the Second Minnesota Conference on Cultural Emblematics (1995) (Emblem Studies Group: University of Minnesota, 1996), pp.31-55.
  19. ’How Emblematic is Scève’s Délie?’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance , 58 (1996), 405-417.
  20. ’When is it a Device and when is it an Emblem? Theory and Practice (but mainly the latter) in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century France’, Emblematica, 7,2, 1993 (1995), 239-57.
  21. ’Whatever Happened to the Native French Tradition? The Decline of the Vernacular Emblem in the Seventeenth Century’, Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 17 (1995), 69-86.
  22. ’Paris to Lyon and Back Again: Trends in Emblem Publishing in the Mid Sixteenth Century in France’, in P. Ford and G. Jondorf, eds., Intellectual Life in Renaissance Lyon (Cambridge: Cambridge French Colloquia, 1993), pp.63-80.
  23. ’Is it a Proverb or is it an Emblem? French Manuscript Predecessors of the Emblem Book’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance , 55 (1993), 83-111.
  24. ’Montenay Comes to Edinburgh: A French Emblem Book Seen Through Franco-Scottish Eyes’, in A.Adams and A.J.Harper, eds., The Emblem in Renaissance and Baroque Europe: Tradition and Variety (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp.132-153.
  25. ’The Bifocal Emblem Book, or How to Make One Work Cater for Two Distinct Audiences’, in A. Adams, ed., Emblems in Glasgow (Glasgow: Glasgow French and German Publications, 1992), pp.113-34.
  26. ’The Theatre des bons engins Through English Eyes: La Perrière, Combe and Whitney’, Revue de littérature comparée, 256 (1991), 653-673.
  27. ’The Long and the Short of It: Structure and Form in the Early French Emblem Book’, in B. Scholz, ed., The European Emblem (Leiden: Brill, 1990), pp.55-83.
  28. ’La beaulté que femme doibt avoir: la vision du corps dans les Blasons anatomiques ’, in M.M.Fontaine, ed., Le corps à la renaissance (Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1990), pp.39-59.
  29. ’Sixteenth-Century French Translations of Alciati’s Emblemata’, French Studies, 44 (1990), 271-288.
  30. ’The Sixteenth-Century French Emblem Book: Decoration, Diversion or Didacticism’, Renaissance Studies, 3,2 (1989) (Special issue: Forms of Eloquence in French Renaissance Poetry ), 115-33.
  31. ’The Sixteenth-Century French Emblem Book: Writers and Printers’, Studi francesi , 92 (1987), 173-90.
  32. ’Picta poesis : The Relationship Between Figure and Text in the Sixteenth-Century French Emblem Book’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance, 48 (1986), 621-52.
  33. ’Alciati and the Greek Anthology’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, (1982), 1-18.
  34. ’Jean de Vauzelles, Moralist and blasonneur ’, Studi francesi, 71 (1980), 277-88.
  35. ’Emblem Books for a Popular Audience? Gilles Corrozet’s Hecatomgraphie and Emblèmes’, Australian Journal of French Studies, 17 (1980) (Special 16th-century issue), 5-29.
  36. ’The Influence of Ovid on a Sixteenth-Century Emblem Book: Barthélemy Aneau’s Imagination poetique’, Nottingham French Studies, 16 (1977), 1-18.
  37. ’The Evolution of a Sixteenth-Century Emblem Book: The Decades de la description des animaux and second livre de la description des animaux, contenant le blason des oyseaux ’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance, 38 (1976), 437-57.
  38. ’Sixteenth-Century Collected Editions of blasons anatomiques’, The Library, 31 (1976), 351-68.
  39. ’French Studies: The Sixteenth Century’, The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies (Modern Humanities Research Association), 1975, pp.65-85.
  40. ’Symbolism in Colour: Colours and their Symbolic Values in Literature of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in France’, Aberdeen University Review, (1974), 242-52.
  41. ’French Studies: The Sixteenth Century’, The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies (Modern Humanities Research Association), (1974), 61-83.
  42. ’French Studies: The Sixteenth Century’, The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies (Modern Humanities Research Association), (1973), 64-81.

Return to the Top

Forthcoming

  1. ’Spreading the Word: Illustrated Books as Political Propaganda in Seventeenth-Century France’ to be published in D. Adams and A. A. Armstrong, eds., Elites, Printed Media and Social Control (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
  2. ’Male or Female: Visual and Verbal Gendering in Allegorical Representations in the Hymnes du temps and Hymnes des vertus ’ to be published in S. Gszonyi and A Kiss, eds., The Iconography of Gender , Studia Poetica, 2005.
  3. ’Which Bits Travel More Easily? The European Dissemination of Emblematic Figure and Text’ to be published in P. Hoftijzer, J. Rodding, P. Smith and F. van Dijkhuizen, eds., Essays in Honour of Bart Westerweel, Verloren, 2004.