Le Blason Contemporain: On Women Poets' Objectifying of the Male Body

During the French Renaissance, the 'blason' became a popular and an important poetic genre. The 'Blason du corps femenin', in which male poets presented witty, playful descriptions written in praise or blame of individual parts of the female body, attracted particular attention. In 1990, nine contemporary French women poets published a collective volume, Blasons du corps masculin, which updates and recasts this traditional genre. By turns humorous, tender, and defiant, their poems turn the 'blason' genre upside-down in order to unmask the gender politics implicit within it. In their idiosyncratic and surprising neo-blason these women poets express their fascination for — and feelings of ambivalence toward — the male body while undoing its mythic 'power' and its cultural authority. Their work reminds us that no description or portrait is neutral. It also provides a striking example of the preoccupation with representing the body in unconventional ways that has inspired so much compelling contemporary art and literature.