Text/Image Mosaics in French Culture: Emblems and Comic Strips (review)
her discussion of the carafe standing on the bookshelf behind Erasmus. This she associates with paraphernalia found in images of Saint Jerome in his study, suggesting that Erasmus may have wanted to masquerade “as a secular St Jerome” (108), a strained conclusion that seems indebted to Lisa Jardine’s well-known book, Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print (1993). This reader was surprised to find Jardine’s work absent from Balavoine’s citations. Nonetheless, Balavoine’s conclusion that iconographical and emblematic approaches to paintings must respect the principles of “morphological identity,” “structural autonomy,” and “contextual coherence” (111) remains perceptive and pertinent. Overall, Die Domänen des Emblems is a handsomely produced volume, coherently laid out and generously illustrated. The editors are to be congratulated in bringing together such a wide range of scholars and topics, and organizing the material in a way that does not lose sight of the volume’s premise or purpose. This timely book will be welcomed as a progressive and provocative contribution to the ongoing debate about the remit and range of extraliterary emblems. SIMON MCKEOWN King’s College School, London