Pretty Vivisections: The Poeticization of Women's Suffering in Renaissance Literature
Abstract
Much attention in Renaissance-era works of poetry and drama is paid to the bodies of women: line after line of flowery language devoted to describing each feature of a woman, often comparing her to the natural world or to classical mythological beauties. These winding studies of ladies’ bodies came to be known as “anatomical blazons” – or, in French, the blason anatomique, also very simply summarized by Ann Rosalind Jones in her book “Distant Voices Still Heard” as a “love poem written in praise of a woman’s body.” While plenty of these blazons are, at most, tasteless, a disturbing number of these blazons examine the female body under conditions of extreme distress or violence, with emphasis on the preservation of the subject’s beauty through the horrors she endures, whether it’s bloodless peril or complete mutilation. Through analyzing the compositional and narrative treatment of Orlando Furioso’s Angelica, The Faerie Queene’s Amoret, and Titus Andronicus’s Lavinia through their perils in their respective texts, this research seeks to not only define a new concept of the blazon– the blason macabre– but examine how it has survived and adapted to new forms, specifically that of modern horror cinema.
Start Time
16-4-2025 10:00 AM
End Time
16-4-2025 11:00 AM
Room Number
252
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Presentation Subtype
UG Orals
Presentation Category
Arts and Humanities
Faculty Mentor
Joshua Reid
Pretty Vivisections: The Poeticization of Women's Suffering in Renaissance Literature
252
Much attention in Renaissance-era works of poetry and drama is paid to the bodies of women: line after line of flowery language devoted to describing each feature of a woman, often comparing her to the natural world or to classical mythological beauties. These winding studies of ladies’ bodies came to be known as “anatomical blazons” – or, in French, the blason anatomique, also very simply summarized by Ann Rosalind Jones in her book “Distant Voices Still Heard” as a “love poem written in praise of a woman’s body.” While plenty of these blazons are, at most, tasteless, a disturbing number of these blazons examine the female body under conditions of extreme distress or violence, with emphasis on the preservation of the subject’s beauty through the horrors she endures, whether it’s bloodless peril or complete mutilation. Through analyzing the compositional and narrative treatment of Orlando Furioso’s Angelica, The Faerie Queene’s Amoret, and Titus Andronicus’s Lavinia through their perils in their respective texts, this research seeks to not only define a new concept of the blazon– the blason macabre– but examine how it has survived and adapted to new forms, specifically that of modern horror cinema.