Blazon or
Blason is a poetic catalogue of a woman's admirable physical features, common in
Elizabethan lyric poetry: an
extended example is Sidney's 'What tongue can her perfections tell?'
The Petrarchan
conventions of the blazon include a listing of parts from the hair down, and
the use of hyperbole and simile in describing lips like coral,
teeth like pearls, and so on. These conventions are mocked in Shakespeare's
famous sonnet, 'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun'.
