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University of Hawai'i Library UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I LIBRARY WRITING HERBERT WRITING SIDNEY: MARY SIDNEY HERBERT, LITERARY PATRONAGE, AND EARLY MODERN TEXTUAL PRODUCTION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DMSION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAW AI'I IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PlllLOSOPHY IN ENGLISH MAY 2008 By Joan K. Perkins Dissertation Committee: Valerie Wayne, Chairperson Mark Heberle Elizabeth McCutcheon Todd Sammons Kathy Ferguson We certify that we have read this dissertation and that, in our opinion, it is satisfactory in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English. DISSERTATION COMMITTEE ~<-9 ~o Chairperson ~C7/1@ &:,aLrl. 1t1&..~ ~~.~ ~ t.d""lr- -- iii © 2008, Joan K. Perkins iv ABSTRACT "Writing Herbert Writing Sidney: Mary Sidney Herbert, Literary Patronage, and Early Modern Textual Production" analyzes constructions of Herbert and Sidney to identify rhetorical strategies and critical approaches that both affirm Herbert's authority as a writer, patron, and editor and that undermine representations of her as an important literary figure. While many twentieth-century scholars construed Herbert's role in the publication of the Sidney texts as either negligible or intrusive, attention to the ways in which these texts fimctioned as signs in what Barthes describes as a "second-order signifying system" contributes to a greater appreciation of Herbert's influence on British culture and of the process through which texts are appropriated to serve social, political, and economic interests. Through her use of literary conventions, print publication, and social display, Herbert redefined Sidney's role in Elizabethan mythology. By identifying him with the aristocratic ideal, Herbert contributed to her family's increased wealth, status, and power, and validated England's hierarchical class structure by mystifying its operations and valorizing its elites. Chapter 1 of this dissertation problematims the prevalence of the single­ author paradigm, arguing that as Sidney's patron and editor, Herbert profoWldly affected reception ofhis texts. Chapter 2 proposes that sexism, misconceptions about sixteenth-century patronage, and investments in the male heroic tradition have affected representations of Herbert's and Sidney's relative roles in the Wilton coterie. Chapter 3 considers Herbert's agency in textual meaning-making. By examining v continental and domestic models for the coterie, this chapter suppoxts the contention that Herbert, as its patron, significantly affected both the direction and the style of its literary production, including the introduction of continental genres. Chapter 4 provides close readings of Herbert's poems "Even Now That Care" and "Angell Spirit" that demonstrate her use of hagiography and feudal allusions to establish Sidney's mythic stature and to identify her own persona with it. Through her use of syntax, zeugma, and ellipsis, Herbert appropriates the cultural capital she assigns him; in the process, she affirms and enlarges sixteenth-century notions of women's heroism. The epilogue broadens the discussion of textual appropriations to include 1. Rigoberta MenchU and the late twenlieth-century debate about literature. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 vii Chapter 1: Writing SidneylWriting Herbert: The Single-Author Paradigm and Critical Constructions of Sir Philip Sidney and Lady Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01 Chapter 2: Contexts and Constructions of Sidney's Patronage and the Wilton Coterie 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 31 Chapter 3: Contexts and Constructions of Herbert's Patronage and the Countess of Pembroke's Circle 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 083 Chapter 4: Mary Sidney Herbert's Self-Representations, 1590-1599 0 0 0 000000000 157 Epilogue: The Single-Author Paradigm and the Late Twentieth-Century Debate About Literature 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 21 0 Works Cited 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0253 vii Preface This dissertation began as an exploration of Mary Sidney Herbert's and Philip Sidney's versification techniques, the correspondences between the psalm and sonnet as lyric forms, and the similarities and differences between the erotic experiences constructed by these forms. However, in the course of my preliminary research. I arrived at a number of questions and concerns that substantively altered my focus. These two early modem writers, who were also siblings, are almost inevitably paired. As a feminist, I was lroubled by the extent to which Philip Sidney'S status both as a literary icon and as a cultmal myth continues to shape contemporary constructions of Mary Sidney Herbert and ofher work. Reading page after page of twentieth and twentieth-first century scholarship, I became increasingly frustrated with criticism that overlooks Herbert's role in the tradition, subsumes her work into Sidney's, or makes claims for her that are then undermined through ineffectual rhetorical strategies. My most urgent objective, I decided, was to better understand how and why efforts to write women into literary history so often have the effect of seemingly reinforcing the standards through which women traditionally have been accorded secondary status. As I continued my research. I came to believe that the relatively Iimited interest in and appreciation for Herbert's work was the outcome of a number of different factors, including twentieth and twenty-first century literary tastes and values. Her:bert's extant body of work is limited, consisting for the most part of translations, and she positions much ofher writing as a completion of her brother's viii work. She evidently limited her choice of subject matter in response to what Wendy Wall describes as "genre-specific interdictions on women's writing" (311),1 and Herbert's surviving texts, whether "original" writing or translation, address subject matter and make use ofIitemry conventions that interest contemporary readers less than those that construct other emotional and psychological experiences, most notably erotic love. Critics rate Herbert highest for her technical skills, and these are unlikely to engage anyone but scholars and other poets; perhaps not even many of them. But there are other reasons that Herbert's participation in early modem textual production and her influence on the Anglophone Iitemry tradition are not as widely recognized as they perhaps should be. These factors include her subject position as the sister of a major British writer and her involvement in her brother's work as editor, collaborator, and de facto literary executor, historical and biographical contexts which are crucial to their textual production and in which Herbert has most often been devalued, at times in order to maintain focus on Sidney as the more appropriate subject of literary history and criticism. But if in the course of researching and writing this dissertation I was frustrated by Herbert's frequent construction as a literary "little sister" instead ofas an influential early modem writer and editor, I was even more confused by conflicting representations ofher as a Iitemry patron. Although Herbert had been celebrated as a major patron by many twentieth and twenty-first century critics and by early modem I Wall cites the Dedication to Margaret Tyler's 1578 translation ofA Mirrour of Princely PMrJes and Knighthood as a source on early modem gender policing of specific litemry genres (310-11). ix literary figures, in the late twentieth century her patronage activities were reassessed and demoted to secondary status.2 The model of literary patronage that provided the context fur this assessment seemed riddled with inconsistencies, and I had difficulty conceptualizing it In an effort to better understand the role patronage played in early modem textual production, I conducted extensive research in this area. including among my sources social historians as well as literary critics. In the process, I came to doubt the connotations of the term "literary patronage" as it had traditionally been employed by literary scholars and to query critical analyses that construct the practice as somehow distinct from the operations of the social network whose primmy purpose, as historian Penry Williams explains, was to supply personnel for posts and offices throughout the kingdom and to administer the day-to-day fimctions of governance (120-24).
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