ISO AFABulous Renaissance Poets

[radiantfracture]

As I was galloping the class through the sonnet form today, a student asked an excellent question about whether Renaissance women poets used the sonnet form differently than men. (In a first-year lit survey course!) -- which I did not know nearly enough about to answer at all properly. (Despite having just confidently made one of those breezy teacherly proclamations that sound like you have the receipts to back it up.) So I said I would find out.

So for Tuesday, when we do variations on / responses to the sonnet, I'd love to have some good examples.

I will do much fevered research of my own, but if in your travels you happen to have discovered favorite renaissance poets who were assigned female at birth (or weren't but identified femmewise) and you had any thoughts thereupon, I would definitely like to hear about them. Full credit via username or RL name given.

Sonnets preferred but I can make other things work.

As it stands, my main knowledge is that the Queen wrote sonnets. [ETA Which seems to be not so much knowledge as An Error.]

{rf}

Comments

[agoodwinsmith]

I haven't read the analysis, but I love this one. I used it in our wedding invitation:
https://poemanalysis.com/anne-bradstreet/to-my-dear-and-loving-husband/

[radiantfracture]

Thank you! Anne Bradstreet is perfect.

[jazzfish]

Ooh, a chance to use my RenLit! Too bad it's been two decades since I needed to dip into it.

The only female poet I'm at all familiar with is Aphra Behn, who's better known as a playwright. (And is technically Restoration-era, quibble quibble.) Looks like most of her poems were written as songs for her plays, and mostly in tetrameter. But there's at least one sonnet-shaped object in here, "Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child": https://allpoetry.com/Aphra-Behn

[caitri]

My first thought was Mary Wroth and how her sonnet sequences were basically confessional poetry about her love life and family life, BUT she gave pseudonyms for herself, her lover, and everyone basically, because there's only so much stuff you can cop to when you are at court. If you compare with Shakespeare, all his sonnets are pretty much read as being drawn from life and used as evidence for this or that biographical theory, while if you compare with Donne, you generally get more "pure" metaphysical poetry.

[sovay]

I will do much fevered research of my own, but if in your travels you happen to have discovered favorite renaissance poets who were assigned female at birth (or weren't but identified femmewise) and you had any thoughts thereupon, I would definitely like to hear about them.

I got Isabella Whitney and Mary Sidney as AFAB poets of the Renaissance, but I am not sure that either of them wrote sonnets. Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1613–21) is a sonnet sequence, but too late for the Renaissance.

[selenak]

Elizabeth I. did write at least two sonnets:

The doubt of future foes
Exiles my present joy;
And wit me warnes to shun such snares,
As threaten mine annoy.

For falshood now doth flow,
And subject faith doth ebbe;
Which would not be if reason rul'd,
Or wisdome wev'd the webbe.

But clowdes of toyes untried
Do cloake aspiring mindes;
Which turn to raine of late repent,
By course of changed windes.

The toppe of hope supposed
The roote of ruthe wil be;
And frutelesse all their graffed guiles,
As shortly ye shall see.

Then dazeld eyes with pride,
Which great ambition blindes,
Shal be unseeld by worthy wights,
Whose foresight falshood finds.

The daughter of debate,
That eke discord doth sowe,
Shal reape no gaine where former rule
Hath taught stil peace to growe.

No forreine bannisht wight
Shall ancre in this port;
Our realme it brookes no strangers force,
Let them elsewhere resort.

Our rusty sworde with rest
Shall first his edge employ,
Shall quickly poll their toppes, that seeke
Such change, and gape for joy.

("The daughter of debate" is Mary Stuart)

and:

On monsieur's departure

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.
Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

[oursin]

Hmmm - I was about to quote 'Anonymous was a woman' but I then had a thought of a vague memory about Italian Renaissance women poets, and turns out there are actually a lot of named ones because it was an okay thing as part of humanist court culture. Though not sure if they wrote sonnets.

[oursin]

Also her contemporary Katherine Phillips 'The Matchless Orinda' and her circle, perhaps.

[sabotabby]

I know nothing, but it sounds like you have some excellent students!

[anne]

What a wonderful question! I only know about French poets, but Louise Labé is one of my lifetime favorites.

ETA: I just remembered Pernette du Guillet, too, although I'm not sure she wrote sonnets. Worth reading anyway, imo...

[radiantfracture]

Thank you! I thought of Behn as a playwright, but of course she would have written stand-alone poetry too.

[radiantfracture]

Thank you! I don't think I'd heard of Philips at all.

[larryhammer]

Came in to drop this name. She's a Sydney, which adds to the resonances of her use of the sonnet and the sonnet cycle and sonnets in a novel.

[cmcmck]

Christine de Pizan wrote sonnets and also translated them from the Italian

[starshipfox]

Anne Locke wrote the first sonnet sequence in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Locke

Wikipedia says the authorship is under contention, but from my reading (which was ten years ago and not in academic context), that's mostly due to misogyny.

[radiantfracture]

Thank you! I found a bit about her, but your knowledge seems much richer.

Anything with intrigue sells much better I find

[radiantfracture]

Sold. Thank you!

[radiantfracture]

Oo, I didn't find Whitney at all. Thank you!

(I'll take early enlightenment. We've only got two days.)

[radiantfracture]

Thank you!

Apparently (I glean) it was much more common for women to be public writers in England and even to publish before James came to the throne and ruined everything.

[radiantfracture]

Thank you! These are great. I think "Monsieur" was the one I was remembering -- I don't think I knew the first one at all. It has a marvellous gallop.

She really had the knack. I wish she'd written more.

I don't think I can sell these two as sonnets after I insisted on all those rules about fourteen lines and iambic pentameter, but they are such good poems that I think I'll offer them as objects of further interest.

[radiantfracture]

They really are awesome.

[radiantfracture]

Oo, all I know about Louise Labé is from the podcast version of Ideas. Thank you!

I think what I'll do for the poetry assignment is let students choose a poem they like and go as far as they want with it, so all of this is useful, sonnet or not.

[radiantfracture]

What. Why did I not know that. (Well, I don't know a lot of things.) Thank you!

[radiantfracture]

Thank you! I'm interested to know the reading angle you were taking years ago, if you remember it.

Yeah, the only authorship that ever seems to get challenged is women and not-rich dudes.

[sovay]

Oo, I didn't find Whitney at all. Thank you!

Great. Welcome!

[oursin]

I'm currently reading a book about Lady Ranelagh (Robert Boyle's big sister and a respected intellectual in her own right) and there was a whole lot of negotiation around women not being in print vs writing letters and manuscripts that were quite widely circulated, plus having a reputation for piety and modesty (probably important for her since she was estranged from her husband and living apart from him). Social status probably also factored in.

[anne]

I've gotten more cool stuff out of assignments like that! "What's your favorite and why" is...one of my favorite things. Good icebreaker, and later in the semester it let people share more of themselves, if I'd done my job right.