This volume is the offspring of many years of research in symbolic representations carried out at the English and Comparative Literature departments of "József Attila" University, Szeged.
In 1990 the dramatic changes in East-Central Europe inspired the organization of an international conference where scholars of the (politically defined) East and West could exchange ideas in the fields of iconography, emblem studies and cultural symbolisation. In June, 1993, at the conference in Szeged, fifty-seven papers were read by scholars representing Canada, the Czech Republic, England, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Poland, Rumania and the USA.
The present publication contains eighteen papers, covering the following aspects: Iconography and Ideology, Iconography and History, The World of Emblems and Occult Emblematics. The volume not only shows the state of affairs in these important fields but also demonstrates the scope and strength of a new type of European cooperation.