On the Composition of Images, Signs and Ideas

First full tr/Bruno’s last visionary work (1591)

“… A celebration to the creative impulse and the fantastic fancies that are, or should be present in all of us.” – from the Foreword.

Some 400 years since his death, the Renaissance philosopher Bruno still excites interest. Thus, this modern translation of his De Imaginum Signorum et Idearum Compositione , first published in 1591, is valuable to a wide range of scholars. De Imaginum defies easy classification, combining poetry, astrology, philosophy, mythology, and science. Meditating on the nature of reality and the limits of human knowledge, Bruno anticipates modern semiology, exploring the creation and meaning of signs and images. While the editor and translator are more interested in Renaissance arcana than the history of philosophy, they have included thorough notes as well as a helpful introduction. For special collections. — Library Journal

Giordano Bruno was a truly cosmopolitan figure of the late Italian Renaissance. Often called the Nolan after his birthplace near Naples, Bruno wandered restlessly across Europe preaching his doctrine of cosmic consciousness and publishing it in dialogues and poetry that read today like volcanic spiritual upheavals. With Tommaso Campanella, author of the utopian City of the Sun and a controversial Defense of Galileo, Bruno represents the traumatic decline of humanistic philosophy, heralding the birth of modern natural science at the hands of Galileo and Francis Bacon. His major writings, attacking the Roman Catholic Church and celebrating the poetic frenzy of creative geniuses, have inspired writers of a similar temperament down to the days of James Joyce, who drew on Bruno, as well as Giambattista Vico, for Finnegans Wake. Bruno died in 1600.