Long considered marginal in early modern culture, women writers were actually central to the development of a Protestant literary tradition in England. Kimberly Anne Coles explores their contribution to this tradition through thorough archival research in publication history and book circulation; the interaction of women's texts with those written by men; and the traceable influence of women's writing upon other contemporary literary works. Focusing primarily upon Katherine Parr, Anne Askew, Mary Sidney Herbert, and Anne Vaughan Lok, Coles argues that the writings of these women were among the most popular and influential works of sixteenth-century England. This book is full of prevalent material and fresh analysis for scholars of early modern literature, culture and religious history.
No abstract
Anne Vaughan Lok (or Lock or Locke) (c.1530–1590/1607) is the author of arguably the first sonnet sequence in English – and this is possibly the least important constituent of her cultural contribution. Lok appended the sequence, itself a poetic transcription of Psalm 51, to her translation of a collection of the Sermons of John Calvin, upon the song that Ezechias made after he had bene sicke (1560). While the innovation of the sonnet sequence is, of itself, important, hers is not the work that probably influenced the later sonnet sequences of Philip Sidney or Edmund Spenser. The only poem she can be said to have definitively influenced is Thomas Norton's translation of Psalm 51. Rather, Lok's contribution lies in her influence upon the development of Protestant devotional lyric – lyric poetry based upon scriptural material or expressing a religious experience. Her son Henry Lok is frequently taken as a precedent in studies that trace the emergence of the religious sonnet sequence in England (Lewalski 1979; Roche 1989). But the 1560 sonnet sequence of his mother, ‘A meditation of a penitent sinner’, has recently replaced Henry's work in this narrative as the significant starting point for the development of religious lyric in England (Roche 1989; Spiller 1997).
Culture is not politically neutral. This is particularly true of the culture of the early modern period in which politics is engaged through poetic production. One need not be committed to the study of literature as a political project to recognize that poetry and culture are inherently political. David Norbrook suggested some time ago, "Certainly one should not deny the distinctions between poetry and other forms of discourse. But in the Renaissance these distinctions were by no means as absolute as they become in Romantic theory. . . . The issue is not so much why one should politicize poetry as why critics have for so long been trying to depoliticize it." 1 Edmund Spenser was invested in the use of poetry as a vehicle for the transmission of political ideas. His politics were deeply embedded in the English colonial project, and we have both argued elsewhere, "the politics and economics that ultimately produced settler colonialism, chattel slavery, the forced migration of peoples, and the development of the British empire animate . . . early English texts." 2 Spenser's poetry and politics have different afterlives, and the ideologies that pass through his works adhere to us today. Our bodies themselves signify according to cultural history; understanding what and how they signify requires attending to the histories that have been overlaid on them. When we transmit the terms and relations that produced these histories, we are not simply failing to unravel them, we are, to some extent, reproducing them.Over the past thirty years, early modern studies has been increasingly interested in the emergence of race as a category of identity, one that could variously demarcate groups of people along lines of lineage, nationality,
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.