Richard Lovelace's Selected Animal Fables and the Transformation of the Emblem Tradition

Abstract

It is difficult, if not impossible to give a comprehensive, cogent definition of the ‘emblem’ to accommodate its diversity as a genre, a definition that covers all the works produced under the name emblem during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is, therefore, neither necessary nor possible here to discuss definitions for such a large and eclectic field like the emblem tradition. Soon after its emergence, the emblem became an accepted form and exercised a vast influence over literature, art, and decoration of the period.  Many writers were fascinated by it, including English poet Richard Lovelace (1616-1657), who used strategies of emblem books in his representation of creatures by integrating pictures and texts in a genre. This paper is an attempt to read Lovelace's poems The Grasshopper, A Fly Caught in a Cobweb, The Ant, The Snayl ‘The Snail’, and The Falcon in the light of the emblem tradition, showing how Lovelace uses the tradition. Focusing on his animal fables, the paper illustrates the different ways in which Lovelace employs or transforms the strategies of emblem books. Various references will be made to the poems to explain how the poet capitalises on the emblem heritage, while at the same time adapting it by rewriting the original story behind the emblem to channel his staunch political views in favour of the Royalists. The paper contends that, without referring to the emblem legacy accessible to Lovelace, certain aspects of his poetry would remain ambiguous.