Gendering of the Blazon: A case study of Isabella Whitney’s and Aemilia Lanyer’s poems

Gendering of the Blazon: A case study of Isabella Whitney’s and Aemilia Lanyer’s poems

This paper attempts to reveal the gender politics behind early modern sonneteers’ blazoning of the female body and to discuss how Lanyer and Whitney as women poets appropriated the male-centered literary form in their respective poetic works. By blazoning London’s streets and vendors, Whitney displays her rich knowledge of London and stresses her willing mind to share the (imaginative) wealth of London with her possible patrons and the public. A desire to strengthen an emotional bond with readers through the act of blazoning is also evident in Lanyer’s religious poems. In her poetic world, Lanyer deploys the blazon to put the body of Jesus Christ under the gaze of female mourners at the crucifixion, and by means of her feministic vision to turn it into a communion among Christian community exclusively of females. Both Whitney’s and Lanyer’s blazoning thus exemplifies how creative women poets can be in the appropriation of male-centered literary conventions to the extent of offering an alternative model free from individualistic and male biases. More theoretically put, they showed another possible development of the blazon as a trope by choosing to deploy it to serve for the mutual and good-will based friendship with their readers, instead of using it as a triumphant moment of their literary achievements as the male counterparts often did in th

This paper attempts to reveal the gender politics behind early modern sonneteers’ blazoning of the female body and to discuss how Lanyer and Whitney as women poets appropriated the male-centered literary form in their respective poetic works. By blazoning London’s streets and vendors, Whitney displays her rich knowledge of London and stresses her willing mind to share the (imaginative) wealth of London with her possible patrons and the public. A desire to strengthen an emotional bond with readers through the act of blazoning is also evident in Lanyer’s religious poems. In her poetic world, Lanyer deploys the blazon to put the body of Jesus Christ under the gaze of female mourners at the crucifixion, and by means of her feministic vision to turn it into a communion among Christian community exclusively of females. Both Whitney’s and Lanyer’s blazoning thus exemplifies how creative women poets can be in the appropriation of male-centered literary conventions to the extent of offering an alternative model free from individualistic and male biases. More theoretically put, they showed another possible development of the blazon as a trope by choosing to deploy it to serve for the mutual and good-will based friendship with their readers, instead of using it as a triumphant moment of their literary achievements as the male counterparts often did in th