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Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, British Isles English Language and Literature 1998 Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon Marshall Grossman University of Maryland, College Park Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Grossman, Marshall, "Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon" (1998). Literature in English, British Isles. 14. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_british_isles/14 STUDIES IN THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE John T. Shawcross, General Editor " . s··x ~v&AEOR.VMw 4' . .. r The PafsioD of ChriG.· · · - . p. 2. ·Eu Apo'Iogle iu. defen£~ of_W:onien. ' 3 The·T~aJ;~s ~~ t~e Daught~J'•of~~~fal~~ · 4 .' 4 TheSalutationand~orto~of~~- Vitginc : ·_ Marie• ·, 1 • . • · · · · · ' > - • . ~ With d rs othtr things notvnlitto bir*l! : .Writteall>yMii\ris v£mlli4 Lttnyer, WifetoCa_pt~ . .¢'ifonfo La1!p SerilallttO the- · _ · ,. Kings MaJdne~ · · '• ' · ~··· ._ AT · LoN.DON Ptinted b~ Valentin~ Sim'mc1 for RicharJ BrmittH, and are . co.bt fold at his Shop in Paules Churchyard; :ttthe . Signe ofthe r!o_urc de Luce and Crov.n~~ - I -6 1 1. Aemilia Lanyer Gender, Genre, and the Canon MARSHALL GROSSMAN EDITOR THE UNIVERSITY PREss oF KENTUcKY For Jacob Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 1998 by The University Press of Kentucky Paperback edition 2009 The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Frontispiece: Title page of Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611), courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8131-9266-6 (pbk: acid-free paper) This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses Contents Preface ix Introduction 1 1. A.L. Rowse's Dark Lady DAVID BEVINGTON 10 2. Looking for Patrons LEEDS BARROLL 29 3. Seizing Discourses and Reinventing Genres BARBARA K. LEWALSKI 49 4. Sacred Celebration: The Patronage Poems KAru BoYD McBRIDE 60 5. Vocation and Authority: Born to Write SusANNE WooDs 83 6. The Feminist Poetics of "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum" }ANEL MuELLER 99 7. The Gendering of Genre: Literary History and the Canon MARSHALL GROSSMAN 128 8. (M)other Tongues: Maternity and Subjectivity NAOMI J. MILLER 143 9. The Love of Other Women: Rich Chains and Sweet Kisses MICHAEL MoRGAN HoLMES 167 10. The Gospel According to Aemilia: Women and the Sacred AcHSAH GmBBORY 191 11. "Pardon ... though I have digrest": Digression as Style in "Salve Deus RexJudaeorum" BoYD BERRY 212 12. Annotated Bibliography: Texts and Criticism of Aemilia Bassano Lanyer KAREN NELSON 234 List of Contributors 255 Index 257 This page intentionally left blank Preface In 1989, having been scheduled to teach the then required undergraduate sur­ vey course in Renaissance and Baroque Literature at the University of Mary­ land, I found in my mailbox a large packet from my colleague Jane Donawerth. The invaluable contents of this packet, which had been assembled by a college committee on women in the curriculum, were a reminder of my obligation to include works by women in my syllabus, and a carefully culled collection of readings, draft course materials, and suggested approaches. Not the least of these collegial gifts was a country-house poem, "The Description of Cooke­ ham," by Aemilia Lanyer. Intrigued by this poem and the ways in which it would affect my teaching of other poems in its genre, and fortunate in my proximity to the Folger Shakespeare Library, I read through one of the two copies of the Salve Deus Rex judaeorum (1611) held there. Thus began my engagement with the poetry of Aemilia Lanyer and what it could teach me about the dialectical interrelations of gender, genre, and canonicity. Selections from Lanyer became a staple in my courses, and, when Susanne Woods's edi­ tion of the poems came out in 1993, the volume in its entirety became a rv quired text. Having become evangelical about Lanyer's merits, I soon connected with a network of aficionados with whom I organized a session on her work for the 1992 MLA meeting in Toronto. The earliest versions of the essays by Lewalski, Berry, Woods, and myself included in this volume were presented at that meet­ ing. Plans for a collection of essays began thereafter. As with most matters in scholarship, the path from idea to book was length­ ened by detours and along the way required the solace of many helpers. Most notably Jane Donawerth, having introduced me to the poet and the field, not only by handing me Lanyer's poem, but also by initiating me into a network of collaborative scholarship, remains a prime resource. David K. Miller gave me the opportunity to discuss Lanyer at the Strode Center for Renaissance Studies at the University ofAlabama, listened to my ideas through a summer oflunches in the Folger garden, and put me in touch with the University Press of Ken­ tucky when it was time to seek a publisher. Susanne Woods, Ann Baynes Coiro, Barbara Lewalski, Boyd Berry, Kari McBride, Achsah Guibbory, Janel Mueller, Karen Nelson, and Leeds Barroll shared their works and sources with me, as Vlll PREFACE well as their advice. Special thanks go to Amy Stackhouse for her keen editorial eye and her invaluable and generous help with numerous scholarly chores. John Shawcross made brilliant suggestions about possible contributors, offer­ ing encouragement and a careful reading of the manuscript. I am also indebted to the comments and suggestions of an anonymous reader for the University Press of Kentucky. As always, the staff of the Folger Shakespeare Library pro­ vided attentive service, a quiet, collegial environment, with free coffee all day, cookies every afternoon, and, not incidentally, all the books I asked for. I can­ not imagine a greater privilege for a scholar than the one conferred by my Folger reader's card. The title page of the 1611 Salve Deus Rexjudaeorum, reproduced as fron­ tispiece, is courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Versions of two of the essays included here have appeared previously: Achsah Guibbory, "The Gospel According to Aemilia: Women and the Sacred in Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex ]udaeorum," in Sacred and Profane: The Interplay ofSecular and Devotional Literature, 1500-1700, ed. Helen Wilcox, Richard Todd, Alasdair MacDonald (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1996); and Janel Mueller, "The Feminist Poetics of Aemilia Lanyer's "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum," in Feminist Measures: Soundings in Poetry and Theory, ed. Lynn Keller and Cristianne Miller (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). I thank VU Press and the Univer­ sity of Michigan Press for permission to reprint these essays, both of which have been revised for this volume. Unless otherwise noted, all citations to Lanyer refer to Susanne Woods, ed., The Poems ofAemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex ]udaeorum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Introduction I will begin with some meager and probably by now familiar facts. Aemilia Lanyer was the daughter of Baptist Bassano, a Christianized Venetian Jew, who was a member of the queen's music, and Margaret Johnson, his common-law wife. In 1592, at the age of twenty-three, she was married to Alfonso Lanyer, also a musician and a participant in a number of military expeditions. By her own report, she spent some time in her youth in the household of Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent. She comes to our attention because in 1611 she did something extraordi­ nary for a middle-class woman of the early seventeenth century: she published a small volume of religious, epideictic verse, the Salve Deus Rex ]udaeorum. This book was printed by Valentine Simmes for Richard Bonian. 1 There seem to have been two impressions in 1611; only nine copies are known to survive, six of these are of the second impression. Two presentation copies-one for Prince Henry, the other for Thomas Jones, Archbishop of Dublin-make stra­ tegic omissions among the dedicatory poems, reflecting the likely responses of the intended recipients.2 In 1978, A.L. Rowse, in the service of his own tendentious identification of Lanyer as the "dark lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets, brought out a modern edition of the Salve under the problematic title, The Poems ofShakespeare's Dark Lady. Happily, Oxford University Press has since brought out an edition edited by Susanne Woods of the Brown University Women Writers Project. Unlike Rowse's edition, the Oxford edition has Aemilia Lanyer's name on the title page, includes reliable biographical and textual introductions, and is suitable for classroom use. The emergence ofLanyer from dependency on a presumed connection to Shakespeare into, so to speak, her own write, is, of course, part of a broad and significant movement toward recovering women's voices long hidden behind the disadvantages of gender that hampered them in their own time and a patri­ archal canon that continued to cultivate deaf ears into ours.
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