Introduction

Summary

Provisional pleasures

While browsing through a card shop just before Valentine's Day a few years ago, I noticed a valentine with a photograph of a pre-Raphaelite painting on its cover. In the painting, a medieval woman with a cloud of golden hair bent fervently to kiss the hand of a knight who had clearly just slain the dragon now lying behind them. Half of a red lance protruded from the dragon's side, while the other splintered half remained in the knight's now-quiet hand. Because something about the card seemed out of kilter, I took it down to look inside. No surprises there: “You're My Knight In Shining Armour. Happy Valentine's Day.” The problem was that in the painting, the knight was gazing quietly over his lady's shoulder, as though at some invisible complication or heaviness. Only when I looked at the back of the card did I learn that the 1898 painting by Mary F. Raphael (fl. 1889–1915) was titled Britomart and Amoret. I felt as though someone were teasing me – or perhaps (since I did not know the sex, sexual orientation, politics, or education of the card-maker who had paired Raphael's painting with that tag to form a valentine) it was my private pleasure rather than one I shared with someone else.