Originally used to refer to a shield or coat of arms, the term "coat of arms" has transformed its meaning through the description of virtues or positive attributes, usually of a woman, in poetry from the end of the 16th century. “Coat of arms” can mean either a noun, meaning the actual list of virtues, or a verb, meaning the process of praising, adorning, describing, or boasting. Through poetry, the word transfigures its meaning according to its relevance to the subject and its destination. A coat of arms is frequently performed in relation to the female form in erotic admiration. However, through texts such as William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, his Sonnet 130 and Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, the convention that the blazon is blurred and nuanced in relation to its interpreter and recipient, creating the argument that the coat of arms may be more than just a poetic tradition. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay Before we can determine what exactly a coat of arms does, it would be poignant to consider what a traditional coat of arms would entail. Literary and cultural studies scholar Nancy Vickers examines the original sonnetist, Francesco Petrarch, through a lens hypercritical of his blazons' execution. Petrarch's Laura, often represented, absent, but passionately loved, is the subject of his sonnets, admired and emblazoned in Petrarch's verse. Vickers states that Petrarch always described his beloved as "a part of the parts of a woman", as "a collection of extremely beautiful dissociated objects". This raises the question of the necessity of the coat of arms and the discovery of why and how it appeared. While the traditional coat of arms beautifies and celebrates in admiration and awe, it almost literally dismembers a woman into mere parts or “objects”. The purpose of this approach is almost completely unclear: why separate each part of a woman to celebrate her? Why is it parts and not a whole? It could be a divide-and-conquer technique, whereby the viewer divides what he or she sees into parts that are easily mapped and easy to understand both through gaze or through verse, and, in doing so, masters each of the fragmented territories. Blazing might more innocently be a distribution of attention and respect across the body rather than focusing on a single (usually sexual) part, leading blazoning to become a more celebratory style of beauty instead of a conquest of man. Nevertheless, the coat of arms exists. in different forms between poetry and drama. As Petrarch's coat of arms solidified, the lover became an absent figure, inaccessible and often ignorant or unaware of love. The poetic coat of arms is lyrical, imaginary and it is entirely up to the reader to illustrate it in their mind. Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti is a typical example of poetic blazon: “If the sapphire, lo, her eyes are clear sapphires; If rubies, behold, her hips are healthy rubies; If pearls, its teeth are pearls, both pure and round; If ivory is his forehead is ivory; if it is gold, its locks hold best on the ground; if she is silver, her fair hands are of a silvery shine..." Spenser inventories the attributes of his love, drawing her into an amalgam of precious jewels, which recalls Vicker's criticism of Petrarch. Laura's coat of arms also compares her to a rose: Sweet is the rose, but it grows on a heather Sweet is the juniper, but its branch is sharp..." Spenser recognizes here the dangerousness of her beauty and her.compares it to a beautiful but guarded thing, a thorny rose, recognizing its inaccessibility and the unrequited nature of its love. In Astrophel and Stella, a sequence of sonnets, author Sir Philip Sidney recognizes Petrarchan's pattern and rhyme scheme as well as Sidney's traditional atmosphere of admiration and desire. including the adage from Sidney's typical Petrarchan love poem.Stella's coat of arms, however, does not extend beyond her face, an anomaly as the coat of arms is commonly erotic. There is his golden “covering” (hair), his alabaster “brow” (forehead), his “door” (lips), his “lock” (teeth) and his “porches” (cheek). Although this is a typical, if miniature, style of blazon, there is a certain non-conformity in the tone adopted by Sidney. Stella's mouth only "sometimes" allows grace, and her eyes are dark, reminiscent of a "touch" - a shiny black stone, an image that complicates the typical theory of admiration of the coat of arms. This style of compliment and non-compliment is reminiscent of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. , commonly called “the anti-blason”. From "my mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun" to "my mistress, when she walks, walks on the ground" (as opposed to the heavens with the goddesses), Shakespeare uses negatives to strangely insult the purpose of his sonnet. But Sidney and Shakespeare still use this emblem, not to insult, but to define their beloveds as more realistic than any other woman "belied by false comparison." Sidney and Shakespeare decide that earthly beauty, that of a "heavenly guest" and a woman who "walks on earth" rather than that of a goddess in the sky, is equally exciting. Sidney concludes that nothing, in the sight of Stella, is more beautiful than her, while Shakespeare swears that his love is "as rare" as that of all those who lie to their beloved or compare them falsely. Although he compares his love to unfavorable things, there is no doubt that his love is still both strong and passionate. In poetic tradition, readers are forced to imagine a woman with golden hair and blue eyes. The visual aspect of poetry is necessary to validate the beauty of the loved one. However, in the theater, there is an impossibility of the absence of the loved one, since the actors present themselves in physical bodies for the representations of the coats of arms. There is a difference in the actual display of the coat of arms; while Petrarch writes for his unrequited lover, the actors speak either to their lovers or about their lovers before an audience of spectators. The immediacy of the physical presence introduces a third party: those to whom the loved one appears. The form of the coat of arms idealizes a figure that a viewer need not imagine, and the physical existence presents a direct interaction between beloved and lover. Whereas in poetry the reader is the intermediary, the audience directly witnesses a character's appearance. character by another in the drama. Nevertheless, the theater took the issue of the coat of arms in stride and manipulated it in many ways. Olivia from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night appropriates the coat of arms in a loose complication of gender roles and mastery versus submission. However, while traditional blazoning is to or for a certain person, Olivia blazons herself in a strategy of mockery. "I will distribute various pictures of my beauty. It will be inventoried and every particle and utensil labeled at my will: like, object, two lips, indifferent red; object, two gray eyes, with eyelids; object, a neck, a chin , and so on. Olivia sorts her facial features into an “inventory,” both appropriating her own features while labeling them in a marketing manner. His reference to his will could have a double, or atriple meaning: will as in one's own free will; will as in the legal document drawn up before death; or will of the subtitle of the play Twelfth Night: Or What You Will. She recognizes in this moment sovereignty, which, unbeknownst to her, is an ephemeral segment of bodily autonomy, since her own body will be exposed in the next act. Olivia satirizes the importance of value based on one's attributes, in a way mocking the coat of arms itself, but then employs the same pattern when talking about Cesario. “Your tongue, your face, your limbs, your actions and your spirit give you a quintuple coat of arms.” Besides the irony of Viola dressing up as a false Cesario, making a woman always the recipient of the coat of arms, Olivia returns to the original meaning of the word. The coat of arms she refers to, juxtaposed with a dramatic coat of arms, is the shield mentioned in the Oxford English Dictionary definition. Not only does Olivia list Cesario's physical attributes, but she also references the importance of physical attributes. His appearance is a coat of arms, a trumpet, of his status and his birth. The use of the coat of arms as a signifier of one's place in society recognizes the coat of arms found on the original coats of arms, indicating a person's family and heritage. This moment between Cesario and Olivia also provides some clarity in the sense that the gender questions posed and explored throughout the play are suspended. There is little confusion, or perhaps little attention, as to who belongs to which gender affiliation. Olivia simply admires a person, performing a blasphemy on “him,” creating an exchange between the viewer and the contemplated in an appreciation of beauty. Isn’t that exactly what this coat of arms is for? Furthermore, Cesario embodies the idea of ​​the distant and absent lover, because Cesario is not actually a real person. Viola's disguise, Cesario is fictional, making Viola a vehicle through which Olivia expresses a love that is certainly not reciprocated simply by the fact that Cesario does not exist. In the second act, Maria presents the audience with a different interpretation of the coat of arms - one of which was used to her advantage on the unsuspecting and vulnerable Malvolio. "I will drop him obscure epistles of love, in which, by the color of his beard, the shape of his leg, the manner of his gait, the expression of his eyes, his forehead and his complexion, he will find himself very moved. In this passage, Maria lays out Malvolio's exact desire to be admired by Olivia, and performs an unintentional blaming of his attributes after calling him something entirely different: "The devil is a puritan that he is or anything constantly but a lover of time.” ; an affectionate donkey who contradicts without a book and pronounces it loudly; the best convinced of himself, so stuffed that he thinks, with excellences, that it is his foundation of faith that everyone who looks at him loves him". In a strange juxtaposition of Malvolio's faults and his values , Maria mocks and celebrates the blazon, regardless of his intentions. Because Malvolio's fantasy of Olivia's love is so great, it is easy for Maria to manipulate him, and he becomes vulnerable to the trap of the feigned blazon. . The letter, perfected with Olivia's seal, begins "to the unknown beloved", recalling the clandestine emotions that the lover feels for his beloved, like Petrarch towards his unknown beloved, Laura. is a lover of Petrarch in many ways, although her reconfiguration and reapplication of the coat of arms complicates the traditional relationship between lover and beloved. The female characters in Twelfth Night interpret the coats of arms of the male characters: Cesario Sincerely and Malvolio. facetiously. This raises the question of power. Who has the upper hand,..