Heather McAlpine, Ph.D. (University of Ottawa, 2009), is an Associate Professor of English at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia. She has published articles on Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, and The Germ.

• Illustrations1 The Emblem and Its Victorian Contexts1 What Is an Emblem?2 The Development of Emblem Studies3 The History of the Genre4 Rhetorical and Devotional Emblems5 The Emblem and Meditation6 Natural and Conventional Theories of Language7 The Cupid and Anima and Schola Cordis Traditions8 The Victorian Context2 “Thoughts towards Nature”: Pre-Raphaelite Emblematics in The Germ1 Pre-Raphaelite Beginnings2 “The Child Jesus”: Normative Emblematics3 Unillustrated Emblems4 Floriography5 D.G. Rossetti’s Ambivalence and Aestheticism6 The Problems of Publication3 “Wise upbraidings”: Christina Rossetti’s Devotional Emblematics1 Background2 Naked Emblems in the Goblin Market and Prince’s Progress Volumes3 Emblematic Devotional Prose: Called to Be Saints and Time Flies4 “How meet beauty?”: Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Emblem1 Early Sacramentalism2 Pre-Raphaelite Connections3 Emblematic Language: Onomatopoetics4 God’s Language: Hieroglyphics and the Emblem5 “The Wreck of the Deutschland”5 “Devious symbols”: Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Unorthodox Emblematics1 Background2 Embracing Emblematics: The PRB Period3 “Positive Agnosticism” and Revised Works4 Religious Doubt, Emblematic Continuities: The Later Works6 “All are types unmeet”: Swinburne and the Limits of the Emblem1 The Emblem: Admiration and Ambivalence2 Emblems in Swinburne’s Art Criticism3 Questioning Devotional Emblematics4 Political Poetry and Rhetorical Emblematics5 Emblematic Failure and the Sublime7 Conclusion: What about William?1 The Work Yet to Be Done

“Heather McAlpine has […] managed to show the pivotal role emblems played in the development and emancipation of these artists’ aesthetics. For this reason, her book will be of great interest to scholars and students alike who want to have a different take on the Victorian aesthetics and a fresh insight in the literary analysis of Pre-Raphaelite illustrated and unillustrated works.”-Cezara Bobeica, University of Strasbourg, France in Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, Vol. 61 2020 pp. 345-349