ABSTRACT
The renewal of interest in emblems in nineteenth-century England was seen not only in the continued production of devotional works and the efforts of Tractarian authors, but also in the search for a new symbolic language by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Hopkins too draws on this emblematic portrayal of the heart as musical instrument. The speaking and singing heart perhaps takes inspiration from the chorus of the heart described by Hawkins. The Anglican counterpart of Hawkins's heart book, Harvey's work underwent numerous reprints down to the nineteenth century, when frequently ascribed to Quarles and published together with Quarles's Emblems. In both the Wiericx emblems and the more physical trials of the heart seen in the emblems of Cramer and van Haeften, the progress of the heart is interpreted spiritually and mystically. Quarles's emblems depict the heart being hammered upon an anvil and melted within a furnace, and this is similarly Hopkins's subtextual narrative.
