Romancing the Self in Early Modern Englishwomen's Life Writing

Eckerle, Julie A.

doi:10.4324/9781315606866

Cited by 7 publications

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“…Written up by a mature woman from the collected notes of her younger self, the meditations reveal a 'layered version of her former selves'. 41 Wiseman's important recent essay revisiting Delaval's memoirs in a Jacobite context show it to be an even more complex document than was previously understood, one which offers 'a politicised retelling of an earlier life'. 42 The fact that the toothache story might be an embellishment of an episode which happened to the daughter of a different earl in its first iteration adds to the complexity of this manuscript volume.…”

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confidence: 99%

Lady Elizabeth Delaval (1648/9–1717): Toothworms and Intertextuality

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2017

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The life-writing manuscript of Lady Elizabeth Delaval exists in a single, bound volume, into which she transcribed various notes originally composed between 1663 and 1672. 1 As Margaret J. M. Ezell has explained, 'this manuscript volume, both in its presentation and in its content, demonstrates the extent and sophistication of a young woman's concept of literary self-presentation during the Commonwealth and Restoration'. 2 This makes the text particularly interesting to literary historians: it contains a mixture of genres including autobiography, poetry, religious mediations, and prayers. Writing in a commonplace book is normally an occasion for self-reflection on real-life events, and this book is no different. Ezell identifies the voice of the manuscript as that of a 'passionate soul'. 3 However, work on this manuscript by Ezell and, more recently, Femke Molekamp and Julie A. Eckerle has shown that this compendium also displays clear evidence of the wide ranging multi-genre reading that Delaval had done. 4 The memoirs also, as Molekamp has rightly pointed out, 'reveal a fragmented selfhood', one for whom the conflicting pressures of religious piety on the one hand and secular temptations in the life of a privileged young woman, on the other, are evident. 5 As well as giving an opportunity for self-reflection, one meditation in particular demonstrates the ways that Delaval drew on other texts, religious and medical, to frame her reflective meditation. More intriguingly, research

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Section: But Though I Wonder Much To See a Plane Demonstration Of Whamentioning

confidence: 99%

Lady Elizabeth Delaval (1648/9–1717): Toothworms and Intertextuality

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2017

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Annual Bibliography of Works about Life Writing, 2012–2013

Wachter¹,

Yamashiro²

2013

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Viewing the Jacobean Cleopatra Portrait: Literary and Visual Intersections in Female Devisership

Malay¹

2018

Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies

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The Jacobean portrait of Cleopatra provides an opportunity to explore more fully the concept of female devisership. Previous identifications of the sitter as Elizabeth Throckmorton and Anne Clifford are problematic. This article explores Clifford's engagement with the figures of Cleopatra and Octavia, and the way in which these served as tropes in print and letters to refer to the troubled marriage of her parents. This essay then argues for an identification of the sitter as Venetia Stanley, Lady Digby, drawing upon the work of a number of writers and artists who used the figure of Cleopatra to represent and explore Stanley's character and reputation. Stanley has most famously been portrayed by Van Dyck, by Ben Jonson, and by her husband Kenelm Digby, along with more spurious commentary by John Aubrey. The Cleopatra portrait, interpreted through the concept of female devisership, allows for the possibility that Stanley provided her own response to the many representations of her that were circulating in seventeenth-century English culture. 5 T he Jacobean portrait which bears the title "Lady Raleigh as Cleopatra" (fig. 1) is an intriguing example of the interplay between literature, drama, portraiture and the social encoding of elite communication during the second decade of the Jacobean period. The painting portrays Cleopatra in a dramatic pose as she lifts the asps aloft in her final act of defeat, defiance, and love. Above the figure's left shoulder, attached to the drapery that frames Cleopatra, is an unfolded scroll of paper displaying sixteen lines taken from Samuel Daniel's Tragedy of Cleopatra (1607):

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Romancing the Self in Early Modern Englishwomen's Life Writing

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Lady Elizabeth Delaval (1648/9–1717): Toothworms and Intertextuality

Lady Elizabeth Delaval (1648/9–1717): Toothworms and Intertextuality

Annual Bibliography of Works about Life Writing, 2012–2013

Viewing the Jacobean Cleopatra Portrait: Literary and Visual Intersections in Female Devisership

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