Analysis of Professor Crawford's Lecture of 10/5/11

In class last Wednesday, Professor Crawford lectured on the tradition of the Blazon. She argued that classical Blazon poetry was primarily about competition between men, rather than actually trying to seduce women. To argue this, she relied on the originally anthropological theory called Traffic in Women. She then incorporated this with the theories of Homosociality and Triangulation. Professor Crawford relied on historicist methods to contextualize these theories, describing the intense competitions of the ambitious young men of the courts.

These secondary sources, however, were only useful in so far as they illuminated readings of the primary texts. Professor Crawford focused on Campion, Herrick, and Shakespeare first, to show examples of the early English tradition of Blazons, as well as highlight ways each poet played with the already existing Continental tradition. She drew in the secondary sources to argue that each poet's experimentation with form constituted competition: poetic one-upmanship, in which the poet's primary interest is establishing himself, rather than seducing the object of the poem. I found this argument very convincing. The three theories Professor Crawford presented worked very well with the historical context she described. Yet, as we discussed in our seminar, she did not discuss the role of women in the poems very extensively. I was left wondering where women fit in to the picture-beyond being objectively described.

Professor Crawford finally discussed comparatively modern poems by Carolin Forché and Jean Toomer. She attributed each poet's lampooning or break with tradition to both one-upmanship, as well as reaction against the objectification of traditional Blazons (which, interestingly Shakespeare was also doing). Once again, I couldn't help but think there was more to probe in relation to women in these texts. While the theories Professor Crawford discussed provided a fascinating and convincing reading of the texts, I did not think that they were able to truly account for the role of women in English Blazons.