Re-Reading Mary Wroth

Transcription

1 Re-Reading Mary Wroth

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3 Re-Reading Mary Wroth Edited by Katherine R. Larson and Naomi J. Miller with Andrew Strycharski

4 RE-READING MARY WROTH Copyright Katherine R. Larson and Naomi J. Miller with Andrew Strycharski, Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. First published in 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Re-reading Mary Wroth / edited by Katherine R. Larson and Naomi J. Miller with Andrew Strycharski. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Wroth, Mary, Lady, approximately 1586 approximately 1640 Criticism and interpretation. 2. Women and literature England History 17th century. I. Larson, Katherine Rebecca, editor. II. Miller, Naomi J., 1960 editor. III. Strycharski, Andrew, 1967 editor. PR2399.W7Z '.3 dc A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: February

5 For Margaret Hannay, who has always shown the way

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7 CONTENTS List of Figures Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations ix xi xiii Introduction Re-Reading Mary Wroth: Networks of Knowing 1 Katherine R. Larson, Naomi J. Miller, and Andrew Strycharski Part I Re-Examining Wroth: Authorship, Life, and Society One Sleuthing in the Archives: The Life of Lady Mary Wroth 19 Margaret P. Hannay Two Authorship and Author-Characters in Sidney and Wroth 35 Barbara K. Lewalski Three Can you suspect a change in me? : Poems by Mary Wroth and William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke 53 Mary Ellen Lamb Four Performing fitter means : Marriage and Authorship in Love s Victory 69 Beverly M. Van Note Part II Re-Measuring Wroth: Form and Ritual Five Turn and Counterturn: Reappraising Mary Wroth s Poetic Labyrinths 85 Clare R. Kinney Six Measuring Authorship: Framing Forms, Genres, and Authors in Urania 103 Kristiane Stapleton Seven Voicing Lyric: The Songs of Mary Wroth 119 Katherine R. Larson

8 viii Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Contents Change Partners and Dance : Pastoral Virtuosity in Wroth s Love s Victory 137 Karen L. Nelson Gifts of Fruit and Marriage Feasts in Mary Wroth s Urania 157 Madeline Bassnett Part III Re-Mediating Wroth: Editing and the Digital Humanities The Autograph Manuscript of Mary Wroth s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus 171 Ilona Bell Me and My Shadow: Editing Wroth for the Digital Age 183 Paul Salzman Pamphilia Unbound: Digital Re-Visions of Mary Wroth s Folger Manuscript, V.a Rebecca L. Fall Crowdsourcing the Urania: Lady Mary Wroth and Twenty-First-Century Technology 209 Sheila T. Cavanagh Part IV Re-Mixing Wroth: Beyond the Academy Fourteen Curating Mary Wroth 225 Georgianna Ziegler Fifteen Strange Labyrinths: Wroth, Higher Education, and the Humanities 239 Nona Fienberg Sixteen To beeleeve this but a fiction and dunn to please and pass the time : Re-Imagining Mary Wroth and William Herbert in Feigning Poetry 253 Gary Waller Seventeen Re-Imagining the Subject: Traveling from Scholarship to Fiction with Mary Wroth 269 Naomi J. Miller List of Contributors 281 Index 285

9 FIGURES 8.1 Attributed to Girolamo da Cremona, a follower of Andrea Mantegna, The Triumphs of Love, Chastity, and Death, and The Triumphs of Fame, Time, and Divinity, ca. 1460s. Denver Art Museum Collection Alta Colonna, Amor Constante, Contentezza d Amore, [Vero Amore], in Fabritio Caroso, Courtly Dance of the Renaissance: A New Translation and Edition of the Nobilità di Dame (1600), trans. and ed. Julia Sutton (New York: Dover Publications, 1995), Allegrezza d Amore, Furioso all Italiana, Furioso alla Spagnuola, in Fabritio Caroso, Courtly Dance of the Renaissance: A New Translation and Edition of the Nobilità di Dame (1600), trans. and ed. Julia Sutton (New York: Dover Publications, 1995), Il Contrapasso, in Fabritio Caroso, Courtly Dance of the Renaissance: A New Translation and Edition of the Nobilità di Dame (1600), trans. and ed. Julia Sutton (New York: Dover Publications, 1995), Exhibition case from Shakespeare s Sisters, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC,

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11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book might not have come to pass without Andrew Strycharski. He was instrumental in organizing the 2012 Modern Language Association roundtable, Re-Reading Mary Wroth, that provided the initial spark for this volume, as well as the International Sidney Society s three sessions on Wrothian Networks for the 2014 Renaissance Society of America conference. Andy s vision informs the introductory essay for this volume. Thanks are also due to each of our contributors. The Wrothian network represented by all the contributors in this collection testifies to the vibrant work being generated on Wroth and on early modern women s writing. We have learned much from the rich perspectives represented in their essays, and we are grateful for their diligence, patience, and good humor in responding to our (many) editorial requests. We d also like to thank the New York editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan, particularly Brigitte Shull and Ryan Jenkins, who did a marvelous job of thinking through challenges and facilitating opportunities throughout the process, as well as the Folger Shakespeare Library for the image from Wroth s manuscript miscellany that graces the book s cover. Our dedication to this volume can signal only the beginning of our debt to Margaret Hannay, who has known, encouraged, and guided us since our earliest work on Wroth and other early modern women writers. Not only a model, but a mentor, Margaret s unfailing generosity and deep kindness has illuminated the paths of scholars both within and beyond the pages of this volume, and we honor and thank her for being who she is. Katherine Larson is grateful to the late Rich DuRocher for introducing her to Wroth nearly 20 years ago and to David Norbrook and Lynne Magnusson, who championed the importance of pursuing scholarship focused in the field of early modern women s writing. Thanks are also due to her colleagues at the University of Toronto for their intellectual companionship and to the students with whom she has explored the writings of Shakespeare s sisters. It is a profound pleasure to work among the wider community of Wroth scholars and the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. Katie would especially like to acknowledge Naomi Miller, a mentor and friend who has been an ideal collaborator on this project. Lastly, she is thankful for the love and support of her parents, Rebecca and Stephen Larson, who nurtured her interests in gender studies

12 xii Acknowledgments and literature, and of her partner, Lawrence Wiliford, who always asks good questions. Naomi Miller would like to thank her Smith College colleagues in early modern women s studies, most notably Ann Rosalind Jones and Sharon Seelig, who greeted her arrival on the faculty with the encouraging affirmation that we can be the three good witches of the Renaissance at Smith! Sharing the teaching of early modern women writers among the three of us in one college has been a privilege and a joy. Naomi is delightedly grateful for the friendship and dedicated coeditorship of Katie Larson, who made even the hardest editorial work pleasurable when shared. And, finally, she thanks her partner, Chris Rohmann, for unfailingly astute and patient editorial assistance and for his intellectual and emotional companionship, as well as music all along the way.

13 ABBREVIATIONS ACMRS Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies DNB Dictionary of National Biography ELH English Literary History ELR English Literary Renaissance EMWJ Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal ERO Essex Record Office, Chelmsford HLQ Huntington Library Quarterly MP Modern Philology MRTS Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies MSLW Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth, by Margaret P. Hannay N & Q Notes and Queries OED Oxford English Dictionary (Online edition: RES Review of English Studies RETS Renaissance English Text Society RQ Renaissance Quarterly SB Studies in Bibliography SEL Studies in English Literature SQ Shakespeare Quarterly TNA The National Archives, United Kingdom TSWL Tulsa Studies in Women s Literature