The Personal Rule of Poets

Cavalier and she-majesty: the cultural politics of gender in Jane Cavendish’s poetry

“…Read in terms of a political history of the emotions, her body of writing across several genres can be seen as engaged with the larger process of politicisation of literary production summed up in Ann Baynes Coiro's assertion that 'during the war and Commonwealth, poetry moved out of the circuit of the court and engaged directly in a wider struggle for cultural power'. 42 Jane's poetry contributes to this struggle by clarifying what is at stake for women who position themselves as the speaking creative subjects of Royalist cultural work and represent men as its objects, in the process articulating the political affects associated with the Royalist experience in wartime.…”