Religion, Reform, and Women's Writing in Early Modern England

Abstract

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.

The Imitation of Christ in English Reformation Writing

“…As the emphasis of both Peters’s and Warren’s studies on female piety suggests, the imitatio Christi is also relevant to modern questions about the role of women in early modern devotional and literary culture. Kimberly Ann Coles has pointed out that the ‘critical charting of women’s texts’ within the period continues to operate on the unspoken assumption that ‘their literary products were devalued’ by their contemporaries (1). However, taking devotional writing (long acknowledged as an important genre for women writers) seriously as literature invites us to posit ‘a different view of English literary history’ (1), one that positions women ‘at the centre rather than the margins of intellectual and literary exchange’ (12) 21 .…”

“…One of the women writers Coles cites as ‘central to the development of a Protestant literary tradition’ (1) is Queen Katherine Parr, whose 1545 compilation, Prayers or meditacions outsold each of the three most popular poetical works of the 16th century (Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy ; Samuel Daniel’s Delia ;and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis ) three times over by century’s end (1–2) 22 . This work is in fact an extensive revision of the third book of a 1531 English translation of The Imitation of Christ attributed to Richard Whitford (Coles 53). By excising large sections of the book and reworking the remainder to reflect a Protestant emphasis on scripture and salvation by grace, Parr does more than simply paraphrase her male sources.…”

“…22 22 The Spanish Tragedy , Delia and Venus and Adonis each saw five editions by 1600 (Coles 187, n. 3), while Parr’s text reached twenty editions by the turn of the century, seven of which appeared between 1545 and 1550 (Coles 47). Coles estimates that the five editions each of Kyd, Daniel, and Shakespeare works out to roughly 5000 copies per author, while Parr’s twenty editions equals about 19,000 copies.…”

“…24 24 Both Rogers and Parr revise à Kempis to equate the following of Christ with fidelity to the Word. This understanding of imitatio Christi is much more distrustful of the human imagination than Catholic understandings, which allow that the image of Christ is also printed in the heart (Coles 59–62). However, Lewalski’s debate with Martz about the debts of English poetry to Ignatian and Salesian meditative practices suggests just how subtle the distinctions between ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ notions of good Christian imitatio could be in practice.…”