CATS, Jacob

by Jacob Cats

£750 · Offered by Sokol Books

The English translation of Cats s first book Sinne-en minnebeelden (Portraits of morality and love) published in 1618, extracted from the collected edition of his emblematic work published in 1627. Jacob Cats (1577-1660), seventeenth-century poet, moralist, and statesman, was one of the leading poets in the golden age of Dutch literature. His emblem books, which reflected a stolid Calvinist philosophy, exhorted readers to virtuous and industrial lives. Enormously popular, the books became the source of many well-known maxims and proverbs, giving him the title of Father Cats, a fond soubriquet still used by modern Dutch to describe him. He is best known as a poet and author of emblem books illustrated collections of didactic and moralistic (although clever and often humorous) poetry. They are valued as treasure troves of sociological and historical detail, illustrating not only many facets of daily life in the seventeenth century, but the moral and philosophical ideals of the era as well. Some time ago a study appeared of Cat s indebtedness to certain English social traditions. His indebtedness was by no means left unrepaid; Cats did not borrow from English literature without some return from his own store. In her valuable English Emblem Books , Miss Rosemary Freeman remarked that Cat s work was translated into English by Thomas Heywood, among others. .. So far as I can discover, his emblems do not appear translated in the works of English emblematists. Such English translatio

• Binding: Hardcover

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