ABSTRACT
With its origins in medieval heraldry and courtly love, the blazon seems a straightforward expression of affection by a lover for his love chiefly framed in terms of an enumeration of her charms and virtues. At closer inspection, the beloved’s individual aspects praised by the blazon can be critically seen as disjointed body parts, exposing the female body to the male gaze of the speaker and his listeners. Discussing various examples of nineteenth-century poets conscious of the objectifying perspective inherent in the blazon, the chapter ends with “The Leper”, in which Swinburne takes the blazon’s approach to love to its logical and disturbing conclusion.
