This dissertation seeks to appreciate the English Reformation figure Anne Locke as an important poet, one responsible for producing the first sonnet sequence to be composed in English. Locke's 1560 sequence, A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, consists of five prefatory and six main-body sonnets keyed to the popular 51st Psalm; it is found at the back of a volume of Jean Calvin's sermons translated by Locke. This dissertation discusses Locke's use of the motifs of voice and community in the Meditation to trace the Calvinist spiritual journey from sin to grace, and also looks at the manipulation of these ideas by two later Early Modern women poets, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, and Aemilia Lanyer. Locke's strategy for opening a space for women to speak of faith at a time when the power of voice was traditionally denied to them involves the destruction the most obvious earthly marker of gender, the body, and emphasises the vital importance to the Christian of voice. Locke reminds readers that it is, ultimately, the (genderless) voice that will cry out to God for mercy, of which all sinners, men and women, are equally in need. It is voice that will trace the journey of the sinner to the community of the godly, those souls, unburdened by the earthly restrictions of gender, to whom God has granted salvation. Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, also worked with the 51st Psalm in her project to finish and expand the work of her brother, Sir Philip Sidney. Pembroke, writing near the end of the 16th century for a private audience of readers, shows a more comfortable, assured sense of the presence of grace in the life of her narrator; community has already been gained, and voice now expresses the soul's challenge to help others to find it. Finally, Aemilia Lanyer, whose Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum appeared in 1610, displays the most overtly "feminist" agenda of the three writers. She appropriates a self-consciously female narrative voice to gather a community of godly women around her---women who also enjoy a large measure of earthly power---in order to re-examine the story of Christ's Passion from a female perspective. Lanyer, perhaps more concerned with addressing earthly inequalities than with gaining the kingdom, is perhaps the least successful of the three women examined here in her project. Together, the three provide a fascinating triptych of Early Modern women's writing.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/8974 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Morin-Parsons, Kel. |
| Contributors | Makaryk, Irene, |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 233 p. |
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