SOURCE: "The Emblematic Conceit in Giordano Bruno's De gli eroici furori and in the Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences," in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1943. Reprinted in Lull & Bruno: Collected Essays, Vol. I. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, pp. 180-209.

An English educator, historian, and author, Yates is best known and widely respected for her books on the Renaissance. In the following essay, Yates examines Bruno's use of emblems in Eroici furori, arguing that by describing the divine with Petrarchan conceits, Bruno establishes a link between his work and Elizabethan poetry.

The influence of Petrarch upon English poetry begins before the Elizabethan period, but its most powerful development comes in the last decade of the sixteenth century, during which were published sonnet sequences on the Petrarchan model by Sir Philip Sidney, who inspires and leads the whole movement, by Daniel, Constable, Lodge, Barnes, Drayton, Spenser, and others. Those of Shakespeare...