Publisher's Synopsis
Next to speech and writing, symbols offer an important as well as historically and culturally diversified means of communication. Symbols can be found in textual imagery, but also in paintings, printed images, emblems, heraldic images, and, on a more complex level, in tableaux vivants and in the gestures, homages and courtesies of formalised royal and princely demeanour, usually displayed on special occasions when the communication between the rulers and their people, through the symbols of rulership, has acquired maximum political and social momentum. The forms of symbolic communication dealt with in the present collection of essays therefore rely on determinate signification by means of convention rather than on private symbols. This collection highlights a limited number of themes relative to late medieval and early modern culture with a special focus on the symbols of rulership.
