Emblems and devices were typical in their hybrid nature, with textual and visual elements mutually interpreting and reinforcing each other. Using symbols and metaphors, however, did not necessarily mean producing superficial, entertaining forms of art with no "solidnesse": rather, emblems and devices can be considered as wide cultural indexes in perennial negotiations with the materiality of their symbols. Seen from this point of view, their study can highlight various aspects that are central to the empirical study of Early Modern literature and provide a fresh look at this cultural phenomenon and at the changes in relevance paradigms in a period rife with epistemological and political tensions. Moreover, emblematic texts stressed the centrality of the interpretative moment of a participatory reader and are thus prone to fruitful stylistic analyses: in particular, the stringent theoretical tools provided by Relevance Theory's inferential model of communication can expose not only the emblematists' rhetorical strategies to direct their reader, but also their increasing tendency of constraining the latter's hermeneutic possibilities, allowing a fruitful analysis of emblematic literature and its cultural, economic and ideological bearings.

This chapter highlights the historical evolution and peculiarities of Italian translations of Milton’s epics. The homeland of classicism and stronghold of Catholicism often subordinated aesthetic judgement to moral judgement, and Milton appeared too unorthodox and irregular to suit the cultural and religious expectations of Italian readers. Thus, despite its relevance in Milton’s own cultural development, Italy has been a major contributor to the ‘conspiracy of silence’ noted by Waldock half a century ago. The common practice of Italian translators has been to self-censor or ‘improve’ Paradise Lost drastically. Borgogni describes Rolli’s longed-for fidelity yielding to contemporary religio-cultural pressures and Papi’s domesticating adaptations and expurgations. He devotes special attention to the ‘conspiracy within the conspiracy’—namely, the neglect of Paradise Regained—with an analysis of the few nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian versions and a discussion of the linguistic and theoretical challenges he faced in his own 2007 translation of the brief epic.

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The article proposes a pragmatic-stylistic analysis of modality and ideology in Abiezer Coppes Coppes Return to the Wayes of Truth(1651), a dramatic recantation written in prison by one of the most (in-)famous radical thinkers of England during the Interregnum. As the analysis will try to show, the peculiar features of this text and its complex communicative strategies call for a wider variety of methodological tools, complementing the application of code-driven models for the analysis of modality with more use-driven pragmatic and stylistic frameworks. In Coppes text, textual and contextual elements are as fundamental as code and grammatical aspects to convey evaluation, and they trigger a very sly conflict between overt and covert meanings, producing interstitial, ironical, even subversive reading possibilities, thus demonstrating how modality is inextricably tied to a variety of linguistic devices to produce a multifaceted message.

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