Blasons

Gordon 1543.B53

Sensuiuent les blasons anatomiques du corps femenin,: ensemble les contreblasons de nouueau composez, & additionez, auec les digures, le tout mis par ordre:/ composez par plusieurs poetes contemporains. Auec la table desdictz blasons & contreblasons imprimez en ceste annee.

[Paris]: Pour Charles Langelier, 1543

Description: 86, [2] leaves: ill.; 12 cm. (16mo)

Binder: Chambolle-Duru

In her study, The Sixteenth-Century Blason Poetique (Bern: Peter Lang, 1981), Alison Saunders identifies this copy of the Blasons in the Douglas Gordon Collection (then still his private collection) as one of only two known copies of this important edition:

"Of the various editions of these poems, it is that produced in 1543 for Charles L'Angelier which surpasses all the others in the number of poems it contains, the accuracy of its text and the sophistication of its printing. Unfortunately it is also this edition which is the least accessible of all, since the only two known copies are both housed in private collections." --Saunders, p. 325

	Because of his suspected role in the 1534 Affaire des Placards, Clement Marot fled to the protestant sympathizing court of Ferrara, where he launched a new literary fashion with his "Blason du Tetin", also called the "Beau Tetin" (the "Beautiful Breast").
Building on the success of his first blason, Marot organized a poetic contest for blasons of the female body. Maurice Sceve won the competition with his description of what neoplatonists deemed one of the noblest and most elevated in the hierarchy of body parts, "Le Sourcil," the eyebrow.

A first edition of the works of the competition was published in 1536, appended to another work of emblematic poetry, and was subsequently augmented and reedited several times. The first collection bearing the title of "Blasons" was published in 1543 by Charles L'Angelier. As noted above, the copy in the Gordon Collection is one of the two known copies of this edition.
Contreblasons: Following the first series of blasons praising the beauty of various parts of the female anatomy (seemingly having run out of such body parts to laud in blason verse), Marot and the other poets turned their focus to poems of blame, "contreblasons" mocking less admirable--even ugly--parts of the female body. Marot's own "Contreblason du Tetin", also called the "Laid Tetin" ("The Ugly Breast"), launched the contreblason fad.